


Fantasy

by reg_slivko



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: (aka spying), (like just a touch really), (not in the main pairing), Age Difference, Angst, Attempted Sexual Assault, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Smut, F/M, Light Dom/sub, Loss of Virginity, Mutual Pining, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Oral Sex, Unrequited Love, as is witcher tradition, dub con (but not that bad), somewhat canon-divergent, too many bathing scenes, underage in some countries but not mine lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:13:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22105363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reg_slivko/pseuds/reg_slivko
Summary: Fantasies are beautiful but dangerous, and Ciri's fantasy of being loved back is about to get entirely out of control.[Inspired by the Witcher TV series, but set several years after series 1.]
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 165
Kudos: 574
Collections: Good Relationship Etiquette (familial included) - or Good BDSM Etiquette - or Good Relationship and BDSM Etiquette





	1. Chapter 1

_“Please, please, please,” she whispered fervently, a desperate chant._

_“‘Please’ what, love? What do you want?”_

_“You know what I want.” Her pulse was beating so fast, and her breathing panting so heavy, she was beginning to feel dizzy. She’d never wanted anything so much before._

_“Of course I do, but I want to hear you say it. I’ll give you what you want, if you give me what I want. And I want to hear you say it.”_

_Her breath hitched as she felt heat rushing to her face from the anticipation of how embarrassing it would be to say aloud._

_“I want…” she sighed, resigning herself to the humiliation, “I want you to make love to me.”_

_Geralt’s face twisted, fighting a smile, but soon he couldn’t help but chuckle._

_“Make love? How juvenile.”_

_“I’m not a juvenile. I’m grown,” she announced with a hint of agitation._

_“Barely,” he growled. That deep voice always sent a tingling shiver down her spine. “But grown enough to understand that I’m not going to ‘make love’ to you.”_

_“You said I would give me what I want if I said it!”_

_“Exactly.” He leaned in to whisper into her ear. “I know what you_ really _want.”_

_An involuntary squeak bubbled from her throat as she felt his hands run down her stomach, inching closer to where she so desperately needed him to touch her._

_“You want me to ravish you. You want me to fuck you, properly.” His fingers began to lightly trace circles just above her hip: his hands were so coarse and rough, but his touch so delicate. “‘Making love’ is for husbands and wives, it’s sweet, it’s honorable.”_

_He leaned away from her ear, using his free hand to lift her chin and force her to look him in the eyes._

_“Ciri, I promise that what I am going to do to you is thoroughly dishonorable.”_

All too soon, she was ripped from her fantasy by the sounds of Geralt stirring on his bedroll. She instinctively pulled her hand from between her legs, whipping her head to look over at him. Seeing his face in real life just a second after imagining staring into his eyes was jarring, to say the least. The quickly-rising sun brought legitimacy to her fear that he would wake up, convincing her that she shouldn’t try to finish, although that sinking feeling of guilt in her stomach wasn’t unrelated either. She felt guilty every time, but she usually was distracted by having an orgasm (those always seem to get in the way of reason and logic). Now she was going to have to brave the whole day feeling awkward and horny… although that was pretty normal for a 16-year-old girl, especially one who had to grow up around this painfully handsome, excessively masculine, unattainably forbidden man. She never saw him as a father- she still remembered her real father quite well and couldn’t imagine anyone taking his place- but she feared that he saw her as a daughter. He was her protector, her mentor, her friend, and most of all, her destiny. That should’ve been enough, but of course she dreamed of him as her lover as well, and the older she got and the longer she was around him, the more perverse her desires became. There was something innocent about her love for him in the beginning, just the affection of a girl who wanted a big strong man and a fairytale ending like she was taught to want. It didn’t take too long for her feelings to mature into something more, well, mature.

The sexual education that a princess receives, especially from her grandmother, leaves something to be desired. In fact, it leaves out entirely the concept of desire, not that it’s very easy to explain. She didn’t understand it until she felt it: that unmistakable feeling of getting sweaty and cold at the same time, along with painfully wonderful aching ‘down there,’ as she’d only ever heard it referred to. She’d seen erotic drawings before, something she caught the local boys staring at. It was her first and only understanding of what a man looked like naked. It drove her batty to know that this concept of sex was so important, so pervasive throughout everything adults talked about, and that she barely understood it. I mean, she got the gist- there are orgasms, and it causes pregnancy, and penises go into vaginas and occasionally some other places- but she craved to know how it _felt_. There are books on everything and Ciri had read a lot of them, but they call it “carnal knowledge” for a reason, and you can really only know it by truly experiencing it. Her fantasies were so frequent that they had become part of a routine, a daily exercise in simultaneous self-indulgence and self-torture, and yet they were incomplete because she couldn’t even properly imagine how it would feel to be penetrated.

Her fantasies had become such an important part of her life now that the real world was beginning to feel like a place simply to research and prepare for her nightly adventures into her imagination. She found herself memorizing how it felt when Geralt grabbed her waist or brushed her hair aside.

The fantasies were always different, some more outrageous than others. She had noticed they had gotten more and more aggressive over time, her fictionalized, personal version of Geralt consistently asserting dominance over her, physically and psychologically. It’s not that she was against a more sensitive Geralt, and she still longed for him to treat her affectionately and gently… it just seemed more believable the other way, or at least that was how she justified it. 

Seeing him stir in his sleep again, she decided sooner was better than later to get up and take a quick bath in the nearby river. At the very least, she needed to rinse off her hands. The last thing she needed was for Geralt to _smell_ what she had been doing.

The water was cool but not freezing: one of the few benefits of camping in the woods in summertime. Undressing by the side of a river and leaving one’s clothes in a pile in the grass might sound weird or nerve-wracking to some, but over the years Ciri had grown accustomed to it, it was the nature of long travels by horseback. She delicately dipped her foot in first, finding the water to be welcoming and the bank soft on the soles of her feet. She walked the rest of the way in, until she was at the deepest point. The water only came up to her waist, and there was almost no current. She hadn’t been bathing long when she heard the sound of rustling behind her. Her head whipped around, sending damp hair flying into her face, only to see Geralt beginning to remove his bedclothes. 

“How long have you been there?” Ciri yelped, covering her chest with her arms. 

“You need to work on your awareness of your surroundings. No one should ever feel completely comfortable bathing in a river,” he scolded in that aggravatingly-monotone voice.

“You’re the one who has forced me to get used to it,” she defended, hesitantly crouching in order to sink down into the water. She looked down at her chest to see if the water was dark enough to cover her breasts at all, but it was still pretty much full exposure. She didn’t realize she was still watching him until he began to pull his trousers down, and she instinctively whipped her head back around, staring at the opposite river bank like her life depended on it. She could tell she was getting more flushed and more nervous as she heard the sounds of him stepping into the river to join her. The sloshing of the water grew closer until he was standing beside her, the surface of the river hitting just barely above his hips. She didn’t want to look over at him, but somehow she ended up turning anyways. He was cupping water in his hands to wash his chest with, looking down into the river as calm and collected as ever. She assumed she was visibly the exact opposite of calm and collected. He turned to look over at her for a moment, and she tried to soften her expression, since quickly looking away probably wouldn’t dispel any suspicion.

“Aren’t you going to wash your hair?” He suggested plainly. Did she see him look down for a moment into the water? Damn, she was staring right at him and yet couldn’t manage to tell what he was actually looking at?

“Um, yeah, eventually,” she sputtered. His expression seemed to show confusion for a moment, but he shrugged and turned his back to her, splashing his face and running his hands through his hair. Gods, even his back was beautiful: she watched the muscles ripple and shift under his skin as he lifted his arms from the water to his body. She could make out the curve of his spine, count his scars, and even find a few stray freckles. It was as if his body told a story, and she felt the idea to stop staring at him knocking at the back of her mind, but the desire to read his story was so much more powerful…

She reached out and touched him. She couldn’t remember moving towards him or standing up, but the return to reality was swift and ruthless and Geralt spun around, looking down at her.

And there they were, naked in a river, looking right at each other. She considered saying something, turning away, or even just putting her arms back over herself for a last chance at modesty, but her body was frozen in fear, paralyzed as if his gaze were holding her there. He looked directly at her face, not even for a moment faltering, as if he thought this all made sense despite it being the most ridiculous thing she had ever experienced.

“Did you need something?” he asked, the absolute moron.

She didn’t respond, the (other) absolute moron.

“All right…” he grumbled, turning away again, then turning around completely to walk back onto the bank. She winced and turned to let him dress in privacy. Of all the indescribably embarrassing aspects of what had just happened, the one that stuck with her most was that he didn’t even look at her… just as she figured, he didn’t see her as a woman at all. Just a girl, an annoying girl at that, an annoying girl who pokes him in the back while he’s trying to bathe and promises to wash her hair “eventually.” It’s no wonder he didn’t think of her _that_ way- even if he could, her natural social ineptitude was sure to drive him away.

\---

Geralt tried not to think about it while he packed up the camp and loaded Roach with their supplies. It didn’t work. He had barely managed to get out of the river without her noticing his erection (and for all he knew she might have seen it anyways) and that turned out to be just the beginning of his problems. It took more willpower than he knew he had to keep from looking at her indecently, which he sort of brought upon himself by joining her in the river. He must have thought he could handle that temptation, but in retrospect the logic wasn’t really adding up. He had stayed strong, of course, but peripheral vision gave him just enough to send his body all the wrong signals and completely unravel his mind with thoughts of things he desperately did not want to think about. The worst thing was that they had only brought one horse on this journey, meaning she was going to have a share a saddle with him and his unfortunate arousal would be rubbing up against her for an hour.

He groaned. Just the thought of that was so disturbing and so tantalizing. How was he ever going to get the damned thing to go away with that scenario burned into his mind?

He glanced back to make sure she wasn’t coming back from the river yet. _No, this is a stupid, horrible idea_ , he thought to himself admonishingly, but the more honest side of him knew there was only one surefire way to get his affliction to subside…

Checking that he was alone one more time, he walked into the forest, stepping softly to be as quiet as possible. Once he was sufficiently far away- far enough that he couldn’t be easily spotted, but close enough that he could still see the camp in case she came back and looked for him- he reluctantly shifted his trousers down just enough to get his stifled, stubborn length out and exposed. It flexed a bit on its own, clearly still thinking it was going to get something better than a calloused hand. He drew in a sharp breath just from the sensation of maneuvering it: he rarely got so hard from just seeing or thinking about something, but as of late Ciri had had such a peculiar effect on him. Her blossoming into a young woman was becoming harder and harder to ignore: her slender frame carrying stronger curves than before, her face more sunken and mature, she was even getting quite muscular and it complemented her feminine features so well and it was all so inconvenient. He stroked himself hurriedly, hoping to get this all over with as soon as possible before she finished bathing.

 _Ciri bathing_ , his brain echoed warmly, forcing him into the memory of her perfect, pale skin glistening from the wetness of the river. When the sun shined on her directly, the water reflected it back and he couldn’t see past the surface… but some fucking piece of shit cloud had come and blocked the light and that damned picturesque river was as clear as a window. He hadn’t seen much but he wished he had never seen it- yet concurrently wanted more than anything to see more, to see everything. He wanted to see her spread out for him, displaying herself for his consumption; he wanted to see what no one else had seen and he absolutely wanted to go where no one had gone before. He worked very, very hard every day to deny it, but when you’re halfway towards ejaculating on a tree because you saw a girl bathing in the river, the time for denial has ended. Gods, that look on her face, she looked shocked and confused and exposed and he had no idea what it meant. It definitely wasn’t the face of someone who wanted to be seen naked, which is why he was so beyond sure that he was a creepy old man pining after a girl who wanted nothing to do with him sexually and saw him only as some geriatric mentor with mommy issues. The wonderful (and terrible) thing about the imagination is that it doesn’t give a fuck that she doesn’t want you and continues to supply the most filthy depictions of her bent over and begging for more, on her knees and eager to please, wrapped around you clinging on for dear life. Her body was absolutely worth picturing, but it was her voice, her words that really defined his fantasy. It was so hot to imagine her talking dirty, even if it was undeniably things she would never say. 

_I want you inside me, fuck me now Geralt!_

_Do you want me to suck your cock? Dirty boy, tell me what else you want._

_It feels so good, baby, please don't stop, fuck, don't stop._

He leaned against a tree and began thrusting into his hand while stroking, losing control as he felt pressure building. Unexpectedly, his mind began to wander to a softer place: less perverted, more calm and tender and passionate. He imagined her shaky sigh as he would enter her, a stifled moan as she tried to suppress her pleasure, the growing volume of her cries as he took her to the brink.

_I love you, Geralt. I need you._

He gave in to the feeling and fell gladly into the abyss of pleasure. For a moment he imagined that he was looking into her eyes, plunged deep inside her as he finished, and it felt too real, too powerful.

"Ah!" came the unwanted moan during the peak of his orgasm.

"Geralt? Are you all right?" Ciri's voice echoed faintly from the clearing.

He stuttered out a broken gasp, his eyes shooting open. He was still in the throes of it, his member bouncing and straining against his grip as it painted the tree and ground with stripes of cum. Trying to stuff your dick back into your pants, run out of the woods, and gather yourself enough to not seem suspicious when not even one second out of an orgasm is a lot to deal with all at once.

"There you are!" Ciri announced with relief in her tone.

"I was taking a quick walk in the woods, scraped my arm on a tree on the way back- I don't know if you heard me reacting to that." It wasn't by any means a flawless bluff but it would do.

"Going for a walk _after_ your morning bath? I wouldn't be able to feel clean all day," Ciri grimaced.

 _You don't know the half of it,_ Geralt replied internally.

\---

They were most of the way to their destination when she noticed it. For a while she was sure that she was imagining it, or that it was just a pouch or shortsword hitting her at a peculiar angle. Maybe she had grown delirious from having to be cradled by Geralt's enormous muscular body while a saddle rubbed her in all the right (yet so, so wrong) ways. But maybe, just maybe, Geralt had an erection, and it was rubbing up against her back.

He had gotten very quiet, even more than usual. His grip on the reigns seemed much tighter than necessary. She felt her breathing quicken as she imagined pushing back against it- of course it was almost certainly nothing and some dumb misunderstanding… _so maybe the only way to figure what it is is to try to feel it better_ , she found herself thinking. Ever so slightly she pushed her rear back into him, timing it with the shift of the horse's body so that it seemed like potentially normal sliding around on a saddle. She definitely felt it more for a moment, but it didn't bring clarity to what it actually was as much as she expected. As the horse took another step she did it again, and this time Geralt cleared his throat.

"Is there enough room on the saddle?"

"Yes, sorry," she mumbled in reply. Clearly he was onto her, but she needed to feel more. "I need to get my canteen from the saddlebag," she announced, and delicately leaned forward to reach into the frontmost pouch. As her body tilted downward, she could feel the unidentified hard object on her bum and she could almost feel that it was _warm._ She closed her eyes, and involuntarily bit her lip as she convinced herself it must be his most intimate place pressed against her. Maybe if she leaned forward just a bit more, she would be able to feel him between her legs…

She felt his hand on the back of her neck, and he grabbed her collar to pull her back up.

"We're almost to the tavern," he said in a voice so low it was almost like that growl she imagined in so many fantasies. "You can get some water there."

His hand seemed to linger on the back of her neck for a moment and she memorized how it felt before he pulled away.

The tavern wasn't close enough to avoid a long uncomfortable silence, but when they did arrive, Ciri hopped off of Roach and dashed inside. She needed to get away from him for just a minute. 

“Water,” she demanded breathlessly.

“You must be thirsty,” the barmaid quipped, turning to prepare the drink.

“Ale,” Geralt’s gruff voice added as he entered the tavern.

“Whatever happened to ‘please’?” The barmaid crossed her arms, looking at both of them incredulously.

Geralt dropped a few coins on the bar wordlessly. She looked at them and relaxed a bit.

“Eh, ‘please’ is overrated anyhow,” she said with a shrug, grabbing the coins and putting them in her pocket. She brought the ale and water before returning to cleaning tables.

Geralt met a client at the back of the tavern, and Ciri waited for him. Once he was done, he told her they had to wait until the morning to start the hunt and that they would stay at an inn just a ways down the road. Seemed simple enough, until she saw a woman leaned beside the door, clearly trying too hard to look nonchalant. As they approached, she began looking at Geralt (not unexpected, he commands a lot of attention), and doing so with a glimmer in her eye (once again, pretty common reaction, especially from women). The really frustrating part was when she started talking.

“You look lonely,” she said with a quirked eyebrow.

“I’m not,” Geralt replied, all cool and scratchy as usual. Ciri tried to hide her smile.

“Looking for a room?” she asked. 

“You’re not the innkeeper,” he chuckled, “or at least you’re not dressed like one.”

“No, I’m not the innkeeper, but he’s a friend, and I have a room you can stay in,” she offered.

“Let me guess, the kind that one pays for by the hour?” Geralt smirked.

“The kind that isn’t empty; the best kind,” she countered.

“Well, I like my rooms empty.” They started to walk away to get a regular, empty room, but the woman stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Fair enough, but can I ask why you prefer your room to mine?” 

Ciri groaned, continuing to walk in without him and grabbing her own money to pay for the room.

“Room for two, as far away from her room as possible,” Ciri requested, motioning to the door.

“Seems like your friend doesn’t mind,” he responded. Ciri looked behind her to see the woman leading Geralt away. He didn’t even look at her, but she could tell he was feeling the heat of her glare. 

“I’ll take my key now,” Ciri said through gritted teeth, holding her hand out to take the key without turning away from Geralt and the woman. The innkeeper handed it to her with a concerned look, and she stomped off.

She reached the door but stopped short of unlocking it. There was nothing behind that door: no people, no answers, not much to do besides stare at the wall. Everything she wanted, everything she feared, everything she needed to understand, was behind another door. And she knew the way to it already. 

There was nobody around, no one to see her sneaking off to follow a couple to their room.

Of course, every logical sense told her to stay far away, to not spy on something she was surely not meant to see… but logical sense was harder to come across these days and her body seemed to operate independently from it when her feelings for Geralt were involved. So many days, years even, of having to resist temptation when everything you want is cruelly dangled in front of you were taking a toll. 

She was barely aware that she was walking down the hallway to the back room until she began to hear voices in conversation, one distinctly Geralt’s, so deep and powerful that it felt like it was reverberating straight through her body.

“Eager, aren’t we?” The prostitute sounded amused, like this didn’t matter to her at all, and it made Ciri’s gut twist. 

“Bend over,” Geralt demanded. 

There was just the slightest crack in the door, and Ciri stepped carefully towards it, peering in and holding her breath. It was hard to see inside, only a few candles illuminating the room, but she could see the woman on all fours on the bed. The light might have been dim, but it was still easy to see that she was beautiful. Large breasts, wide hips, strong shoulders… she had a woman’s body, and Ciri knew she couldn’t compare. Yes, she had matured, but she was still skinny and bony: sometimes she thought she looked like a boy, all straight lines instead of the powerful curves she saw on this woman. It made her heart sink to see Geralt step closer to her, getting on the bed to kneel behind her. Ciri had seen him shirtless many times, and much closer, so there wasn’t much to discover there, but his face looked so different. Contemplative, focused, yet soft. He ran his hands along her body with closed eyes, like an act of worship. It made her feel sick. She could never compete with his attraction to this woman, and she was just some prostitute, a stranger whose name he didn’t even know. It made her hate him, hate her, and hate herself all at once. The anger mixed with her desire and she finally understood “lust,” the feeling that you need something so badly that you would do terrible things to get it. Or at the very least, degrading and embarrassing things, like pushing your cloak aside to touch yourself intimately while spying on a man and a prostitute through a crack in the door. 

“You’re one of those ‘hurry up and wait’ types, then?” The woman scoffed. Ciri thought she could cry from hearing that. It was like watching a dog eat a prime steak: it’s a waste of a good meal to give it to something that can’t appreciate it. 

His hand slipped down between his legs and Ciri began delicately pressing her fingers against that spot that made everything in her body alight with pleasure. He was entering her and Ciri could almost see something genuine on her face.

"Fuck," the woman hissed. She sounded pained, but in the best possible way.

Immediately Geralt was thrusting into her and Ciri's knees felt so weak. She continued rubbing herself but found that every touch sent a powerful shock coursing through her. It was almost too much to handle.

She watched Geralt wrap his arms around the woman and Ciri's body cried out to be held that way, surrounded by him. He looked completely immersed in her, his whole body curving to deepen his thrusts into her. His passion was obvious on his face, Ciri was enraptured by it: she wanted to memorize it, but knowing it was all for someone else made her want to purge it from her mind entirely.

It was the most disgusting feeling, watching something secret, doing something wrong, just to get herself closer to an impossible fantasy. She was so wet, so ready, she knew if she touched herself just a few moments longer she could come already. 

"Are you about to finish already?" the woman asked in an almost-mocking tone. Ciri nearly jumped out of her skin because she thought the woman was talking to her. Abruptly jolted out of her pleasure, she realized that the prostitute was talking to Geralt and judging by his face, she was right. Ciri felt the back of her eyes burning, the unmistakable sign she was about to cry, as he pulled her close to whisper something in her ear. Despite having been spying on a sexual encounter this whole time, that whisper became the most erotic thing Ciri had ever seen. She had never seen his face look like that, and she knew that she never would again, because nothing she would ever do would make him feel that way about her. A warm tear rolled down her cheek, then another right after it.

"I need you," the woman said softly. It was like a punch to the gut, Ciri literally felt the wind knocked out of her. It was blasphemy, heresy, for a prostitute to tell Geralt she needed him. Needed him for what, a salary? What a disgrace. That woman would never understand how much Ciri needed Geralt… and neither would the man himself.

Ciri turned away, unable to stomach anymore. She wanted to run away, to be as far from this sin as possible, but she would be too loud, so she had to step quietly and slowly. Against every instinct she had to tolerate more sounds from the room behind her. The woman cried that she needed him again and Ciri could've emptied the contents of her stomach right there on the floor. Worst of all was the sound of Geralt's cry, hard to hear because she had made it halfway to their room, but undeniable still. It was undignified, honest. He was letting go of his ego and his cool exterior to become completely vulnerable, something he never did in front of Ciri. Thinking herself far enough away, she ran the rest of the way to their room, crying harder than she could ever remember crying before.

\---

He couldn’t remember the last time he had struggled so much to keep himself together. It was like being a teenager all over again, which gave him more sympathy for how nervous and uncomfortable Ciri had been acting for months now. 

It all started poorly with that blasted horse ride, which was forty-five minutes of dread for what he feared would happen, then a lovely rest of the trip dealing with what he feared would happen happening and all the relevant repercussions. It was like she was _trying_ to make it worse, practically rubbing herself all over him, and he regretted that he reacted so strongly by pulling her back, but it was getting unbearable. He had the foresight to wear a longer tunic, so walking into the tavern with a bugle in his pants was only physically uncomfortable rather than socially. Nobody noticed his predicament except the prostitute: she likely didn’t see it, but she must have sensed his tension, since it’s her job and all. When she approached him he was ambivalent at first, not just resistant to temptation but uninterested entirely. 

“Why do you prefer your room over mine?” she had asked. When Ciri walked away, the woman looked at her devilishly and leaned closer to Geralt. “What’s in your room that you need to get away from?” she asked, voice lowered.

The honest answer scared him so much that he knew he had to fight the truth until it wasn’t true anymore. He decided a good first step would be to forget all about it with this prostitute. A beautiful woman offering sex, what more could he want? (Aside from maybe actually getting it for free, of course.)

She led him to the back room and he felt a peculiar mixture of the feeling that what he was doing was both wrong and right. Wrong like he was breaking fidelity with someone, right like this was the way things ought to be. He tried not to look at Ciri as they walked by, but the weight of her judgmental stare seemed to linger even when she was far out of sight.

“You can leave your clothes on that dresser,” she informed him plainly. He sort of hated hearing her talk: her voice was too deep, too gravelly. He used to find that attractive in a woman but his tastes must have changed.

She shucked off her dress and was already totally nude, apparently deciding to forgo undergarments. She watched him undress and chuckled a bit when he took off his pants to reveal that he was already completely erect.

“Eager, aren’t we?” she teased. _I had a long day_ , Geralt considered saying, but decided she might be better off believing she was the cause of his arousal, and that she probably didn’t deserve or want an explanation.

“Bend over,” he commanded gruffly. Yes, a bit rude, but she was getting paid and had probably had ruder customers anyways. She didn’t seem to mind the attitude as she immediately obeyed. 

He heard footsteps in the hall and decided to assume it was someone else going to their room.

Getting onto the bed behind her, he had to admit she was good-looking. And he wanted more than anything to be attracted to her. He ran his hands along her, admiring her form, but as he closed his eyes he found himself imagining her to be smaller, paler, thinner…

“You’re one of those ‘hurry up and wait’ types, then?” she quipped. Geralt groaned, opening his eyes and trying to be present in this moment rather than falling too deep into a fantasy again.

He reached down and lined himself up with her. She had smeared some lubricating salve on herself, and he could tell it wasn’t her natural wetness: he elected to not take this personally but was kind enough to enter slowly at first.

“Fuck,” she whispered: he elected to take this personally. He gained speed quickly, feeling that she could handle more without much coaxing. It didn’t take too much effort to get himself completely inside, certainly handy with his rather impatient state.

It was better than his torrid affair with the tree that morning, but he found himself going down the same path as before, his mind wandering to thoughts of Ciri and the way her hair looked golden in the sun, or how she smiled when she remembered something funny, or the way her body felt against his when he pulled her close. Just the memory sent a jolt of energy through him, and he wrapped his arms around the woman to pull her closer to him. Ciri was so petite, if he held her like this he would completely engulf her, he could probably lift her easily and put her wherever he wanted her to go, he could protect her, he could have her all to himself…

“Are you about to finish already?” the woman asked, not sounding as judgmental as she could have. Geralt was unphased, too deep into his pleasure to worry about a whore’s opinion. He pulled her face closer, putting his mouth against her ear.

“Say that you need me,” he pleaded, feeling more desperate, feeling like he was teetering on the edge to the point that he would beg if he needed to.

“I need you,” she replied unconvincingly. Her voice was too deep, her tone was too plain. He wrapped an arm around her hip and used it to keep her still, plunging into her with fervent, punishing thrusts. She gasped, and he pushed even further, clutching her throat as she let out a tiny yelp.

“Again,” he commanded.

“I need you!” Her voice had gotten higher and softer, and apparently it was enough, because immediately he was spilling into her, and letting out a somewhat embarrassing moan as he did so.

The afterglow didn’t last long, or it was concealed by the shadow of regret. Regret for sleeping with a prostitute or for imagining someone else while doing it, that was harder to say.

“That was a little weird, I’ll be honest,” she said with a sigh, getting off the bed to slide her dress back on. He dressed as well, turning away from her as if there was any sense of decency left to preserve. “Good news for you is that I’ll charge you half, since it was so fast. Just leave the coins on the dresser.”

Geralt’s head turned to the door, suddenly sensing someone nearby. He tossed some coins onto the dresser, rushing to peer out into the hall. He didn’t see anything, but he could still feel the warmth of something. He stepped out carefully, as if he would find whatever he was chasing just around the corner.

“Hey, you paid the full price! Ugh, whatever…” the woman said from inside the room, but Geralt had all but forgotten she was there. He followed the feeling all the way to the end of the hall, and he faintly heard the sounds of crying. Recognizing it as Ciri, he ran to their shared room and flung open the door.

Ciri was laying on one of the beds, face pressed into the pillow, white-blonde hair strewn all about. Her body was shaking with the force of her sobs. He rushed to the bedside, kneeling beside her and placing a hand on her back.

“Ciri, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?” 

She sat up suddenly, his hand sliding away.

“Oh Geralt, you would never understand!” Her words were interrupted by shaking breaths, to the point that it was difficult to make out what she was saying.

“Give me a chance to try,” he offered. She took a deep breath, and it seemed to steady her a bit.

“I just… feel so alone,” she whispered, looking away like she was embarrassed by it.

“Ciri,” Geralt said in his best comforting voice, taking her tiny hand in his, “you’ll never be alone. You’ll always have me.”

She groaned, rolling her eyes and falling onto the bed dramatically.

“You _really_ don’t get it,” she grumbled into her pillow. 

“Apparently I don’t,” he sighed.

“Just leave me alone,” she meekly requested.

He grunted as he stood back up, almost considering staying against her wishes. He looked back at her one last time, and to see her in pain hurt him greatly. What hurt more was knowing that he couldn’t fix it. What hurt most was knowing that she didn’t want him to.


	2. Chapter 2

She was angry with him, but she couldn’t decide if she was angry enough to abstain from pleasuring herself. It wasn’t that she thought she could somehow get back at him by not having an orgasm, it had just become rather difficult to enjoy imagining him when what she had seen tainted every image in her mind. 

She realized she had a hard time getting to sleep without getting off, it had become a nightly routine that helped to tire her out and relax her before bed. She looked across the room: Geralt was laying on his bed, faced against the wall so all she could see was his back. She was used to it, so it normally didn’t stand out, but she suddenly felt very aware of his massive size. He wasn’t just a tall man or a strong man, he was overall big. Big and broad and powerful. It made most of the people he met afraid of him, and some found it very attractive. Ciri always saw it completely separately from either of those feelings. She was so familiar with him, it had become somewhat normal for her. It wasn’t that Geralt was big, it was that everyone else was small, herself included. Maybe that was why she was struggling to feel attraction to other people: he had become the standard by which everyone else was judged, and none could meet it.

Before the incident this evening, she had foolishly assumed that her problem was her desire to have sex with Geralt. That was the desire that seemed to get in the way of everything, that made her feel so sinful and idiotic. Now she had come to understand that her love for him, her need to have him all to herself, was the worst part. Hell, he seemed to accidentally stumble into some pussy in every town they came through; she was so worried that she was the last woman on the Continent he would want to sleep with, but at this rate, that could be true and he might get around to her at some point.

She was getting herself worked up. She was letting herself get unreasonably jealous. She needed to accept that he was not her property, that he didn’t owe her anything, that he was a giant whore who couldn’t resist women (aside from herself, who he seemed to have _no trouble at all_ resisting).

Easier said than done.

\---

Geralt awoke from a dream that he couldn’t remember, though he could feel himself chasing after the shadow of a memory. It was still dark out, so he figured it must be the middle of the night. He was about to sit up and go for a drink of water when he heard the most peculiar sound. Difficult to make out, but even harder to ignore. The sound repeated, and Geralt’s heart sunk when he realized what he was listening to. 

Ciri was moaning: incredibly quiet but definitely real. It was so soft it wasn’t much louder than a deep breath. Damn the night for being so still: no wind, no crickets, no creaky floorboards to protect him from hearing this.

It was obvious she was trying to be quiet. He heard a third moan but it was stifled: less “ah” and more “mm.” He wondered if she was biting her lip, the thought of which made him bite his own absent-mindedly.

Something about it being the middle of the night and him being not as conscious and alert as he would be during the day made it easier to avoid the guilt and shame of what he was thinking about. Ciri’s bed creaked, and he considered that she was arching her back: what a wonderful consideration. 

So much of his fantasy about her had centered around how it would feel to bring her pleasure, meanwhile he had completely ignored the incredible potential of fantasizing about Cirilla bringing _herself_ pleasure. Maybe she was less innocent than he thought, more susceptible to temptation. Maybe she tried to resist the desire to touch herself but couldn’t hold back, even with someone sleeping just a metre or two away.

“ _Ah_ ,” she moaned again, almost a gasp. 

He closed his eyes, as if it would help him hear her better, even though he couldn’t see much in the dark and facing a wall anyway. What he wouldn’t give to be facing towards her bed: with his enhanced vision he would be able to at least see her outline under the sheet, her hand between her legs and her chest heaving with hastened breaths.

Two orgasms in a day was apparently enough to keep him from getting completely hard from only quiet noises, but there was still a reaction taking place. Regardless of what his groin thought of the ordeal, his brain was obsessed, his mind swirling with images of how she would look making sounds like this.

In case you were wondering, she would look marvelous: her hair would be tangled and messy from thrashing her head on the pillow; her lips would be wet and a little swollen from biting them without even realizing she was doing it; her face would be flush, all pale except for those spotty red cheeks that she got when she was overheated; her eyes would flutter shut, but perhaps they’d fly open in shock when she was pushed over the edge.

How precious it would be to hold her while she did this to herself, or to have to watch from across the room as she told him to simply observe, not being allowed to touch her.

So, sort of like the situation they were already in, except she actually had knowledge of and consent for being listened to. 

Geralt winced, the pang of guilt hitting his chest. What he was doing really _was_ wrong, but at the same time, what else could he do? He couldn’t fall asleep with all this racket, she’s a free woman who can do whatever she wants in her own bed, and he can’t just _not_ hear her. If anything she should know that since his senses are so strong.

That thought gave him pause. If she knew how big of a risk that this was, could that mean she didn’t mind if he heard? He shoved that back to the recesses of his mind: he was the (much) older one, he needed to stop blaming all of his disturbed thoughts on her. The idea that she could ever _want_ him to hear her was nice to think about, at least, even if it was ridiculous and unbelievable.

Her breaths were getting quicker now, she was nearly panting. He winced, suddenly unable to hide from the shame. He could tell she was holding her breath, because all he could hear was the bed ever-so-slightly shaking. Of course he couldn’t be sure, but it was pretty reasonable to conclude that she was having an orgasm which was just too much for Geralt to mentally process in that moment. 

She let out a long, emptying breath. He heard her legs slide down, her body relax into the bed. What a gift, and a curse, to have heard something like that. Geralt let out a deep breath of his own, one he hadn’t realized he had been holding. He hoped that he would wake up thinking this was all some strange dream.

\---

Ciri woke up hoping that the night before had been a terrible nightmare. The sun was just beginning to stream in through the window and the light hurt her sensitive eyes, dry and swollen still from all the crying. She had found it in herself to finally complete a masturbation session (how brave), it had been physically enjoyable but it was psychologically one of the worst experiences she'd had in a while: to avoid remembering the prostitute she had essentially wiped her mind into a clean slate. It was a strange feeling. 

It had gotten pretty warm during the night, so she woke up feeling sort of damp which was unenjoyable. She flung the sheet off, sat up in the bed, and set her feet on the cool wooden floor.

"You're up," Geralt observed, though he didn't literally observe it as he was still facing towards the wall.

"Oh! You're awake," Ciri cleared her throat, her voice had come out all froggy at first, "I couldn't tell."

"Did you sleep alright?" His voice was always deeper and scratchier in the morning.

“Well enough,” she lied, “but I need a bath. And not a river bath.”

“Agreed,” he grunted as he sat up in bed. “The baths are down the hall.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can hear people bathing in them right now.”

Ciri smirked. “Do you know if there are two available for us?”

“I can hear through walls, not see through them.” He stood up and stretched, which Ciri tried not to stare at but failed.

It did turn out that there was room for them to bathe (separately, unlike the previous day’s fiasco), and it was nice to at least try to wash off the day… and night. She was able to clear her mind, and even if it was just for a few minutes, it was much needed. The idea that Geralt was bathing just a wall away was certainly interesting, but a lot less interesting than it would’ve been before the river incident. She washed her hair, which was a little bit of a tactical risk because she wasn’t sure if it would dry before the job today. The annoying thing about washing her hair was needing to hold a towel around her shoulders, otherwise the ends would drip and get her tunic all wet. 

When she stepped out of the bathing room, she smelled something absolutely delicious. She was about to walk down the hall to find out what it was, but she didn’t have to: a young man carrying a basket full of loaves of bread turned the corner. He nearly ran into her, too.

“I’m so sorry!” He apologized, and his voice was somewhat high-pitched: he couldn’t have been older than eighteen.

“Give me a loaf and we’ll call it even,” Ciri suggested with a smirk. 

He smiled back, taking a loaf out of the basket and handing it to her. She had to adjust how she was holding the towel around her shoulders to be able to take it; it was still warm and it felt wonderful on her fingers which were still chilly from the bath.

“What’s your name?” he asked. He was good-looking, certainly: curly brown hair, freckles, green eyes… nothing to complain about. 

“Fiona,” she answered instinctively. She could probably tell him her real name without much risk, but also technically Fiona was _one_ of her real names. 

“That’s a beautiful name,” he said sweetly.

“Thanks, but I didn’t pick it myself or anything,” she replied sarcastically. He laughed.

“I’m Eran, by the way,” he added.

“Nice to meet you, Eran.”

“Only nice because I gave you bread,” he theorized. Ciri giggled, and it sounded so much more girlish than she wanted it to.

“No, you also laughed at my joke, so that was nice, too,” she explained, both of them laughing now.

“You’re not from around here,” Eran observed.

“I’m staying at this inn, so yeah, that would be a silly thing to do if I had a house here,” Ciri pointed out.

“True, but that’s not how I knew you were from out of town.”

“How did you know?” 

“I would’ve remembered you.”

Was she actually blushing? She took a bite of the bread, hoping it would cover her face- she hated how she looked when her face got all red and splotchy.

“So, I’m guessing that you _are_ from around here, and you’re a baker?”

“No, I carry this basket of loaves for fun,” Eran joked.

“Cool hobby.”

“Normally I would say that it’s boring… but now that I’ve met you, maybe it’s better than I thought,” he said with a friendly (maybe a little more than friendly) smile. She wasn’t sure what to say, but she didn’t have to say anything because at that moment, the neighboring bath door swung open. Geralt stepped out, wearing a towel around his waist and using another to rub down his hair. 

The conversation stopped, and as Geralt walked by, he seemed to be going slower than necessary, and he looked at them with an entirely unreadable facial expression. When he finished his leisurely stroll back to their room, Eran turned back to Ciri with a look of shock.

“What was that guy’s deal?”

“He’s a friend,” she sighed.

“You have weird friends.” Eran shook his head, seeming impressed but surprised.

“He’s sort of my only friend,” Ciri shrugged.

“Well, now you have a second friend,” Eran smiled.

“A normal friend?” Ciri asked.

“I can’t promise that,” Eran smirked. They laughed again. 

“If you’ll excuse me,” Eran continued, “this has been lovely, but duty calls,” he motioned to the basket of bread.

“Wouldn’t want to get in the way of that!”

“If you want another loaf you can come by the bakery, it’s just down the road,” Eran explained, “but I probably won’t get away with giving you another free one.”

“What if I don’t need more bread, but I want to say hello?” Ciri asked hesitantly. Eran smiled.

“Then just tell them you’re there to see a friend,” he said, and he gave her a quick wink as he turned the corner and left.

Ciri had so many emotions at once, mostly conflicting: guilty, excited, flattered, uncomfortable… maybe that’s how it's supposed to feel to flirt. Was that flirting? She was so lacking in experience that she didn’t even know. It seems like the line between friendly conversation and flirting is so thin- but if anything crosses that line, it would definitely be a wink. A _wink_. Ciri smiled to herself thinking about it again. She couldn’t tell if she was really attracted to Eran, or if she just appreciated his attention (and food offerings). Maybe the only way to find out was to see him again.

\---

Geralt considered this one of the worst baths ever: not just one of the worst baths he had personally ever taken, but one of the worst of any baths in all of history. His bathwater wasn’t hot enough, for one, and then he had to listen to an entire, cringe-inducing conversation where some boy was trying way too hard and Ciri was actually buying it. 

Having a poor bath is likely to ruin one’s mood, and it was probably Geralt’s ruined mood that ended up causing their argument.

“What do you mean I’m not going?!” Ciri looked shocked, which was unexpected since he had no idea she even wanted to go werewolf hunting.

“It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m a good fighter,” Ciri defended.

“Yes, but you’re not ready yet.”

"What will I do here while you're gone?" Ciri whined.

"Well, while I was gone bathing you were talking to some local boy, so clearly you can occupy your time." Geralt crossed his arms. Ciri scoffed incredulously.

"Really? You're going to call me a slut for talking to a boy?"

"I never said that!"

"You were thinking it," she accused confidently.

"Was not," he responded, with less confidence.

"If not, then you won't mind that I _do_ see him while you're gone." Ciri was bluffing, but technically that's what he had said he wanted her to do. His face went a bit pale hearing that.

"You- what?!" 

"Isn't that what you said, that I could occupy my time with a local boy? Or you could just take me on the hunt."

"Not a chance."

"Well I bet if I tell him I have a room to myself today, there's a good chance he'll come over."

"Ciri, don't be ridiculous."

"What? You don't trust me?"

"Barely," he growled, "and I definitely don't trust him. Boys only have one thing on their mind."

"You would know," she countered. 

"The only thing on my mind right now is protecting you!"

"From boys?" She said sarcastically, as if boys were no threat at all.

"From werewolves! Damn it, Ciri, don't you remember when we were always on the same side?"

"I was always on my side. You're the one who left and got your own side."

"...huh?"

"Ugh, you are so dense sometimes."

"Yeah? Well, I'm quite the buzzkill as well: no boys in this room while I'm gone."

"Who do you think you are? You sound like some protective father."

Geralt sighed. He thought he sounded like a jealous lover. Neither was a good look for him.

“Fine. Do what you want.” 

He slammed the door behind him, which he didn’t really mean to do for dramatic effect or anything, he just had a tendency to get more forceful when he was angry. He decided he would channel that anger into his hunt, even if it meant thinking about Ciri and some damn boy more than he ever wanted to.

\---

As soon as Geralt shut the door, she realized she didn’t want to see Eran or make Geralt angry. She just wanted him to come back, to be with him. However, she knew that she _should_ want to see Eran, to actually spend time with a boy her age. Maybe if she gave it a try, she’d like it. He was cute, and nice, it’s not that she actively disliked being around him… she just didn’t really think about him when he wasn’t around. Yet, the idea of being a normal girl with a normal boyfriend was exciting: she even felt a little giddy as she walked to the bakery. 

It smelled wonderful inside, of course, and the heat of the ovens made it much warmer than it was outside. She was about to ask for him when he appeared from the kitchen.

“Fiona!” He smiled. He had a nice smile, his teeth were just crooked enough to have a little personality.

“Eran, hi,” she said shyly, unsure why she was blushing as hard as she could feel she was.

“I’m glad you came by,” he said, wiping his hands with a towel, “although I was just mixing dough so I’m kind of a mess.”

“It’s alright, I’m kind of a mess, too,” she comforted. He made a confused face, looking her up and down quickly.

“You look clean.”

“I didn’t mean physically,” she explained. He laughed.

“Right. I get that.”

She smiled. It all made sense. He understood how it felt to be this age because he was this age.

“Anyways,” he continued, “where do you want to go? I mean, nothing wrong with staying here, except that I’m already here every day and it’s boring and hot.”

“I don’t think baking is boring! I want to learn about how bread’s made!”

“Flour and water, can we go now?”

“Alright,” Ciri relented, “but I don’t know where there is to go, not being from around here.”

“I’ll warn you now, there’s not much. Unless you’re really into dried meats or, I don’t know, staring at trees?”

Ciri laughed: he was funny, it was comfortable.

“Well we could always just talk,” Ciri hesitantly offered, “in… my room.”

She looked up at him, hoping her face didn’t say that she was trying to proposition him: but also hoping it didn’t entirely not say that. 

“Talk… in your room…” Eran repeated, nodding. “Sounds nice.”

They walked back together, and it was sort of quiet: he did indulge her with more stories about baking and bread delivery. He told her about a demanding customer who always claimed her bread was dry no matter how fresh it was. She wasn’t sure what to talk to him about because she didn’t have any normal stories to tell. She assumed guys didn’t want to hear stories that started with “one time I found out I have magic powers” or “the other day, while I was training in sword fighting with my Witcher guardian” or “my dad was a knight, but also a hedgehog for a while, but now he’s dead and so is my mom and grandma and grandpa.”

When they got back to the inn, Ciri suddenly felt much more nervous. Walking to the door of her room brought a somewhat surreal feeling. As she unlocked it, she felt him looking at her. It wasn't a bad feeling, but it did make her feel kind of cold and vulnerable.

"It's not much, but it's home," Ciri sing-songed. "For a few more days, at least."

"Right," Eran nodded. "Where to after that?"

"Wherever there's work," Ciri shrugged. 

"Too bad," Eran said wistfully, stepping closer to her, "it's been nice having someone to talk to."

"Yeah," Ciri agreed, "it's too bad I can't stay longer."

"But we can make the best of the time that you're here," he said quietly, and she watched his face as he leaned closer to her.

She didn't even realize she was leaning away from him until he stopped.

"Is everything alright?" He asked. She nodded.

"Um, yeah, totally," she said nervously.

"Then why were you leaning away?"

"Fair question. I'm not entirely sure. I guess I thought I was ready for- uh- things that I'm not ready for."

"I can wait," Eran said, crossing his arms as if he would stand there for a few minutes until she wanted to kiss him.

"Listen, Eran, I'm sorry, and you're nice to talk to and all, but I've got some reading to finish before-"

"You're kicking me out?" He asked, suddenly speaking much louder than before.

"I mean, that makes it sound kind of aggressive but, yes, essentially."

Eran scoffed. "Tease."

"What?"

"You're a tease! Means you led me on, convinced me I had a reason to come over here."

"Conversation wasn't reason enough?"

"Hell no."

Ciri gulped. Where had this attitude come from?

"Since it's your fault I'm here, and your fault I thought something was going to happen tonight, seems to me like it's your responsibility to deal with the consequences."

"Consequences?"

Eran grabbed her hand and forced it onto his groin. She yelped, but wasn't strong enough to pull away.

" _Consequences,_ " he repeated. 

The door swung open. Geralt stood behind it, covered in blood, his sword in his hand like a cane.

"Did someone say 'consequences'?" He said with a darkness in his voice.

Eran dropped Ciri's hand.

"Who- whose blood is that?" The boy stuttered.

"Last kid I caught being a little creep."

Eran looked like he might drop dead purely from fear.

Geralt stepped into the room, and his sword made an unpleasant screeching noise as it dragged on the floor behind him. When he was close to the pair, towering over them, he stopped and slowly stooped down. His face just a few centimetres from Eran's, he whispered,

"Run."

He was out of there so fast Ciri barely saw him leave- just a terrified blur. Geralt turned to her, scanning her face with his eyes.

"Are you alright?" His voice was still as gruff as ever, yet she heard a tenderness in it as well. Ciri felt her lip quivering and that burning feeling in the back of her eyes. She threw herself forward to embrace him, not even caring that he was bloody and gross.

"You were right- I'm so sorry- I was just- I don't know why I didn't fight him- I had my shortsword, I should've defended myself- I should never have talked to him in the first place-"

"Slow down," Geralt requested, sitting on the bed and returning her hug.

"This is all my fault," she whispered.

"Is that what he told you?" Geralt asked, and he sounded angry. 

She didn't respond, she just looked up at him. He looked back at her, but she couldn't interpret his expression. He looked focused on her, like he was looking for something on her face. She felt a tear run down her cheek and stop halfway, his thumb wiping it away. She couldn't tell if he was leaning closer or if she was, maybe both. They were moving so slowly, but at the same time, it was all happening very fast. This was the moment: she was so unprepared, it wasn’t at all like what she expected or imagined, but it was perfect. She felt this energy sizzling between them, like they were being pulled together, and she gave into it. She gently closed her eyes, ready to feel his lips against hers…

He moved her aside, standing up and walking away from the bed.

He looked at her and didn’t say anything. She looked back and didn’t say anything. They continued that for much too long.

“I need another bath. And a drink,” he said quietly, and he was gone. 

\---

That look she had on her face, what was he supposed to do with that? The image of how she looked when he held her was burned into his mind: there was blood on her cheek from putting her face on his armor, but her tears left streaks in it; when her eyes were bloodshot, it just made the bright green irises stand out more. He had been impossibly close to kissing her, dangerously close. When she closed her eyes, he had to stop. For some reason, that moment felt like he was going too far. Did closing her eyes mean she was accepting it, that she wanted him to?

He groaned, taking another swig of ale. He needed to stop wasting his time trying to understand these things because it was never going to work.

“How drunk are you?” He heard Ciri’s voice from behind his seat at the bar.

“Not too bad,” he shrugged, not yet turning around.

“You didn’t hear me coming, so my guess is drunker than you think.”

“I heard you coming. I just didn’t say anything,” he asserted, setting the mug down.

“Then perhaps you’re sober enough for a quick spar.”

That made him turn around. She had taken the time to wash her face while he was taking his bath, apparently, and had even changed into some leather worthy of a sword-fighting lesson.

“You do realize I just fought a werewolf less than an hour ago?”

“So I shouldn’t be too hard to beat,” Ciri countered.

“You’re never hard to beat,” he grumbled.  
Ciri rolled her eyes. “So will you fight me or not?”

“I guess I can’t criticize your instincts and then not give you a chance to work on them,” he thought aloud, standing up from his seat.

“That’s the spirit,” Ciri cheered with a hint of sarcasm. 

Fighting cheered him up, in a sense. It gave him something else to focus on, something that he had to focus on, meaning there was no room left for whatever was troubling him. 

There was an open field just a short walk away, which seemed better than fighting in front of the inn. 

“Ready?” she asked expectantly, already holding her sword in a defensive position.

“I’m still setting my pack down, don’t get ahead of yourself,” Geralt chuckled.

“Maybe you shouldn’t let your guard down, how about that?” she teased with a quirked eyebrow.

Geralt drew his sword from the sheath on his back, not raising it completely.

“Come on, at least act like you’re going to try,” she groaned.

“Fine, fine,” he relented, raising the sword. 

She didn’t step forward, so he charged at her. Of course, he didn’t give it everything, but he always tried to challenge her. She side-stepped, which was smart, except that he anticipated it and caught her sword with his. 

She kept her eye on his sword, which was good form as he had taught her. But he was staring at her face: determined, fierce. She had a habit of biting her tongue when she was thinking too hard about theory, which she was doing right now.

“Stop trying to remember the books you’ve read,” he suggested, their swords clinking as she blocked him overhead, “trust yourself, go with your instincts.”

“I thought you said I needed to work on my instincts.” She sounded out of breath, and he could tell she was trying to hide it. He could understand why it was frustrating for her, being so small compared to him. He didn’t have to put in much effort, meanwhile, she was giving it everything. 

He swung again at her side, and she took her sword in a backhanded position to block him. He stepped back.

“Be careful with that grip, it’s hard-” he began. She tossed the sword into her other hand, correcting to a traditional grip.

“Hard to get out of?” She mocked. Seemed like his stale advice was getting on her nerves.

He charged again but she ducked, swinging at his shins. She got a scrape on his greave before he could block her completely. His sword pushed her back and she tumbled backward. He thought she might be out until she jumped back up and stood, ready as ever.

“Can’t get me that easy,” she taunted.  
“The shins? That’s a little dirty. I thought we were going to have a fair fight,” he complained.

“You want a fair fight? Come and get it,” she hissed, making a ‘come hither’ motion. Geralt laughed: she was getting into it. 

He began to charge at her but she met him halfway, their swords clashing and scraping hard enough to spark. She spun and hit his sword again, and again: each hit was so forceful he needed to step back to block properly. She was hitting high, forcing him to duck and crouch to not get the tip of her blade in his face. Just when he thought he had figured the pattern, he stabbed into the gap in her swings. She must have seen it coming: she swung her blade right into his wrist: he managed to pull back and keep his hand intact, but it required dropping his sword.

He backed away, and she kicked his weapon to the side.

“I think this is when you forfeit,” she smirked. He sighed, raising his hands in defeat. She did this cute little jumpy-squeal thing that made his heart race (at least compared to his extremely slow resting heart rate). 

“I did it!” She pumped her fists into the air, smiling like it was the best day of her life. “Be honest, how hard were you going on me?” she asked.

“About twenty percent,” he shrugged. That seemed to lessen her joy, but by no means crush it.

“I’m still proud. That was fun,” she said with a satisfied sigh.

They walked back to their room, and he listened to her ramble about how she had been thinking for a while about how to get him to go for a stab so she could cut him off at the wrist: “not literally,” she had added, but it felt like she had been going for blood at the time. After a while, he was forced to tune it out, lost in his thoughts.

Maybe he was contending with a woman here. A young woman, of course, but no longer a girl. The implications of that disturbed him. He couldn’t imagine that made it right that he had been hung up on her for months. Yet, it was impossible to ignore that she was more his equal than he originally considered. Especially since he had been giving it forty percent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to give a huge thank you to every single reader. This is by far the strongest and most positive reaction I've had to my work and it is overwhelming! I will be sure to update as quickly as possible, and thanks to my wonderful beta (your-writer-beta-side-piece.tumblr.com) I will be able to provide quality along with quantity.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all this chapter did NOT come to play, it's the length of the first two combined... so get comfy because you'll be reading for a while, lol.

There was word of some suspicious activity in a nearby town, just a day’s ride away, and Ciri was thankful she demanded her own horse for this trip. The legality by which it was acquired is irrelevant.

Just their luck, this next potential job was in a town which happened to be hosting a popular local festival. The streets were crowded with festival-goers adorned with floral crowns and leis, and the entire city echoed with the sounds of music and drums and vendors yelling about their goods for sale.

“Perfect place for some discreet monster-hunting,” she said sarcastically.

“Perfect place for a monster to attack humans,” Geralt noted in response.

They tried to ask around about the rumors they had heard, but most everyone was too drunk or dumb (or both) to work with. They did learn more, but they also got plenty of judgmental stares for being a Witcher and a tiny-girl-apprentice-Witcher looking for monsters and spoiling the beautiful facade of the party.

They travelled so far into the city that they ended up on the other side of it, on the outskirts of town where most of the festivals goings-on had dissipated and there was more open space and rolling hills. They decided to stop for a while and give the horses a rest, plus recover from how punishingly loud it was to be closer to any of the town’s activities.

“We’ve got a fight ahead of us,” he said, “we just don’t know quite what it is yet.”

“Definitely some kind of vampire,” she said confidently.

“What has you so sure of that?” he asked with some suspicion.

“The only story that more than one person corroborated was the boy who was taken in the night, and his mother said there was a small bloodstain on the sheet. Like something bit him on the neck: wouldn’t spill that much blood, but necessary to get him out of the house quickly, which is why there was no body.”

“Talking about a child being killed so cold and factual, you sound like a proper Witcher,” he replied.

“Witchering isn’t about removing your emotions,” she answered back, “because you have to care about people enough to want to save them, but also not care so much that you’re too sad to deal with the reality of what saving people takes.”

He looked at her with a glimpse of shock running over his face.

“Insightful, I know,” she added.

“Truly wise beyond your years,” he said quietly, as if saying it to himself. She was a bit taken aback by the compliment. She looked to the field and quirked an eyebrow mischievously.

“Wanna put that to the test?” she offered.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“Cunning and agility versus brute strength?” 

He looked to the field and back to her.

“A sword fight? In the middle of the day, during a festival?”

“We’re far enough out of town, nobody’s going to arrest us for brandishing weapons,” she justified. 

“‘Nobody’s going to arrest us’ is a sort of weak defense of an activity,” he lectured.

“Ugh, whatever, be boring then,” she relented.

“Wait! I didn’t say I didn’t want to fight,” he smiled.

\---

With a twist of his sword, he had disarmed her, the weapon clattering onto the ground. He started to relax, expecting her to forfeit, but she drew two shortswords out from her waistbelt.

“Those little things? Against this?” He smirked, wiggling his sword a little bit.

“Size doesn’t matter,” she shrugged.

“Spoken like a true virgin,” he added. He had missed these sorts of conversations, when they weren’t so awkward around each other like they had become recently. 

“Who says I’m a virgin?” Ciri winked. Okay, so he was not missing these sorts of conversations as much anymore. Why did the idea of Ciri with anyone (more specifically, anyone _else_ ) make his blood boil? He was mostly sure she was joking, but the unavoidable mental image had an unpleasant effect all the same.

He probably went too hard on her after that, channeling his frustration into the fight. She caught his sword by crossing her blades, twisting down to toss it away from her. 

He wondered why she kept stepping back, forcing him to move forward after her. Of course, it was too late when he understood her plan: as he took one large step forward to reach her, she tucked and rolled between his legs, popping up behind him. Before he could turn, she had one shortsword at his neck and the other blocking his sword.

“Drop it,” she demanded, and Geralt instantly obeyed, a bit frightened yet intrigued by her tone. He raised his hands in surrender, but she didn’t move away.

“You _are_ going to let me go, right?” he asked nervously.

“It’s not over until you surrender, officially,” she explained, “so, surrender.”

He paused for a moment, trying to look back at her without turning his head. Her heart was beating fast, he could hear it.

He grabbed her wrists and spun around, which twisted her arms just enough to force her to drop the shortswords.

“Damn it,” Ciri groaned.

“Don’t give up yet,” he encouraged. “Neither of us has weapons now, and I’ve got you tangled up- what can you do now?” 

“Beg for mercy?” she said sarcastically. Ciri begging, he needed to banish that thought immediately.

“Be serious. Think.”

Ciri closed her eyes. He watched her face, and he could tell she was lost in thought, searching her mind for something. He moved his foot, believing he was starting to lose his balance, but then realized that she had created a portal underneath his feet and he was already beginning to fall.  
“Ciri, no-!” he began, but it was already done; he didn’t let go of her wrists, pulling her with him into the portal. 

They fell onto the grass a few feet away, Ciri tumbling on top of him. He let go of her wrists in surrender. She smiled down at him.

“Bet you didn’t see that coming,” she said proudly.

“Indeed, because it’s cheating,” he frowned. She rolled her eyes.

“You only say that because you can’t do it,” she accused, “but I didn’t say it was cheating when you got mad and nearly tried to take my head off, all because I said I wasn’t a virgin.”

Geralt opened his mouth, but quickly closed it again, not sure how to respond to that.

“Didn’t think I noticed that?” she assumed. “You’re more emotional than you think you are.”

He sighed in resignation. 

“I’m sorry,” he said defeatedly, “I shouldn’t have gotten jealous.”

He didn’t even notice what he had said until he saw Ciri’s face drop.

“Jealous?” she repeated. He suddenly became very aware of the fact that she was laying directly on top of him.

His body desperately wanted him to start taking it all back, explain that he misspoke, tell her he didn’t mean anything by it. Something stopped him, an instinct perhaps, and he found himself simply staring at her face. He figured he must look totally dumbfounded, still processing how one little word had entirely reframed his intentions. He studied her face, hoping to anticipate her reaction, but she was looking at him with a peacefulness, even gentleness, to her expression and he was unable to interpret it.

The only thing he could tell by looking at her face was that it was getting closer. He felt her pull at his shoulders, bringing her face closer to his, so close he started to feel his heart race. His arms wrapped around her, seemingly out of their own volition, and her body felt so small in his hands. 

He rolled them over and instantly he was on top of her. She let out a little gasp and he felt her legs straddle him. He wasn’t sure if he had rolled her over so that he could get her off of him, or so that he could kiss her as deeply as he wanted to in the middle of this field. Either option was just a second away, and both seemed appealing in opposite ways. To stop running, to give in, to hold her and taste her and feel her, or to get up and walk away and tell her this can never happen: he couldn’t determine which would be more of a relief, or even which would be easier.

She was looking up at him with an expression he couldn’t comprehend, but one that made everything in his body light up.

He saw expectation in her eyes. Less confusion than he would’ve assumed. And at the end of it all he saw fear. Just a touch, but he could tell she was afraid. He instinctively pulled away: nothing could be worse than Ciri being afraid of him. She opened her mouth as if to speak, she reached out as if to grab him, but did neither.

“Ciri, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, standing up and stepping back.

“Geralt, I-” she began

“This can’t happen,” he interrupted, saying it more to himself than to her, since he was sure that she was well aware of the fact that it could never happen. He stepped back again, turning away: he couldn’t stand the sight of her strewn on the grass looking heartbroken like that. He couldn’t stand knowing that he did that to her. “I’m so sorry,” he repeated.

When he thought about the concept of running away from his feelings, he didn’t mean it literally, and yet here he was breaking into a sprint. His brain was split evenly between contemplating his emotions about the situation and picturing how it would’ve gone if he had stayed- if she had wanted him to stay. 

It was a ridiculous fantasy, one that poisoned his mind so thoroughly that he had nearly believed it was attainable. He had believed that because it was just a fantasy that it was harmless, yet he had harmed her, scared her, in real life. 

Even with so much shame, he struggled to push the image from his mind. Of course, in his mind, she wasn’t scared or shy but direct and honest: it made it all feel much more justified. 

_Take me, Geralt_ , she would say, _I want you right now._

 _It’s the middle of the day; we’re in a field. Someone could see us,_ he would tell her.

_I don’t care, I need you._

He needed to work on his addiction to these thoughts, so that he could get rid of them for good. He knew that couldn’t happen overnight, though, and in the meantime, he was in desperate need of a place to lock himself in and shamefully submerge himself into one last fantasy of having Ciri all to himself.

\---

Humiliating. That was the only way to describe the grueling experience of having to live with him: humiliating. 

She was done. She didn’t know how she was going to _be_ done, but she was determined to make that day Day 1 of Operation: Getting Over Geralt. Maybe this plan would end with her being over him enough to stay his ward, but she would consider leaving to just avoid the whole ordeal entirely. She worried that her feelings would get in the way of her ability to become a Witcher if she stayed near him.

She reunited with him in a pub not too long later, where she had been waiting, anticipating his need for ale.

“We have a room for the night,” he stated plainly, joining her at the table. She just nodded, not looking up from her book. She heard him sigh, and she knew he was picking up on the silent treatment. 

“It’s not far from here,” he added. She nodded again, giving a little eyebrow raise.

“I can’t tell if you’re listening or not,” he complained. She looked up from the book.

“I’m listening,” she reassured in the least reassuring voice she could come up with.

“We have a room for the night,” he repeated.

“Yes, I heard you: I was listening.”

“Can we leave now?” he asked impatiently.

“Let me finish this chapter,” she requested, looking back to the book.

“Ciri, it’s late.”

“I’m almost done!”

He waited for a few minutes, looking agitated. She wasn’t actually reading anything interesting, but she was desperate for any way to get some power over him, after he had exerted his power over her in such an embarrassing way. She continued to read until it didn’t feel fun to torture him anymore.

“Alright, I’m done,” she announced, closing the book and standing up, “we can go now.”

She started walking before he had gotten up, but he beat her to the door.

“You don’t even know the way,” he said, opening the door for her. She pushed the door open further just to spite him.

He stepped ahead of her and they walked quietly down the road to the inn. They had to weave through to get to their destination; Any other day, she would’ve reached out to hold his hand to avoid losing him in the crowd.

The inn looked nicer than the last one they stayed at, but it was a fight to get inside with so many people loitering in front of it.

“With the festival in town, there was only one room left,” he explained.

“And I’m sure all the guests will be quiet and considerate during the night,” she added sarcastically.

They entered the room together, but stopped in the door.

"There's only one bed?!" 

She didn't even mean to say it aloud, it was just so shocking that it sort of slipped out.

"I'll take the floor," Geralt announced with a tone of defeat, laying his pack down.

"You should take the bed, I can handle the floor," she offered.

"What kind of man would let a lady sleep on the floor?" He asked rhetorically.

"I'm young and spritely and whatnot, I can sleep anywhere. If you're on the floor, I'll have to spend the hunt tomorrow listening to you complain about back pain," she grumbled.

Geralt looked at the bed for a moment.

“We could both fit,” he observed.

She didn’t want to say anything, because excited agreement or vehement disgust were both suspicious responses.

“It’s cold out,” he added.

“Yeah, whatever,” she shrugged, “doesn’t matter to me.”

So there she was, laying on her side, trying to ignore the feeling of Geralt’s side pressing into her back. There was just enough room that she wouldn’t have to touch him if she put her nose against the wall, but his weight meant she just rolled back into him whenever she tried to relax. The least uncomfortable solution was that he stayed on his back and she stayed flush against him. Of course the problem with this was that his hand either had to rest naturally right by her rear, or he had to put an arm under her head. They went with the latter, which just made it feel less sexual but more intimate. Every time she got sleepy, she wanted to nestle into him, so she had to fight that instinct at every turn. Every time she started to fall asleep, she dreamt of him because he was _right there_ and she could literally _smell him_ in her dreams. Every time she jolted awake from a creak in the night or a strange dream, she wanted to turn around and ask him to comfort her, but she knew that it would only make everything more difficult.

Operation: Get Over Geralt was off to a fabulous start.

\---

Day 1 of Operation: Stop Lusting After A Teenager You Pervert went poorly. He was up most of the night, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling, because closing his eyes led to so many inappropriate thoughts. 

He felt foggy the rest of the day from being underslept, and it made him worry for his performance on the hunt. Word was spreading of townspeople dying in their sleep, being haunted with horrific nightmares, and being attacked in the woods by something with a terrible shriek. Of course it was an Alp, and with this summer festival falling on a full moon, it was the perfect time for her to hunt. He wanted to be as sharp as possible for a fight with a creature so intelligent and agile, but he had a pretty bad start to that already. 

They spent most of the day shopping for supplies: normally this wouldn’t take an entire day, but every shop was overrun with tourists and partiers. Thankfully, no one was sold out of anything they needed, because apparently vampire oil and moon dust weren’t popular purchases in festival season. 

As the sun set, they prepared to enter into the area of the woods where a local had recently gone missing. 

“Alps are fast,” he explained to Ciri as he re-laced his boots, “probably the fastest of any vampire. They are perhaps best as dodging, so anticipate where they’re going instead of where they are.”

“Any tips for the shriek?” she asked. Clearly she’d been reading up on them.

“If we can keep her distracted for a while, maybe we can keep her from doing it. Once an alp cries, you’ve just got to brace yourself.”

“What does it feel like?” she asked as she readjusted her waistbelt.

“Like getting stabbed in the ear and hit by a blast of ice cold water at the same time,” he described.

“We’re in for a treat,” she said with wide eyes.

“Just brace yourself, and try not to be scared. Alps cannot be intimidated, they are fearless. You’ll have to be fearless to go against them as well,” he recommended.

“Sounds simple enough. Who’s afraid of being bitten, subjected to horrible nightmares, and then eaten?” 

“They don’t eat people, just drain their blood,” he clarified. “Besides, you have nothing to fear because that won’t happen. They’re easy to kill if you can get them to stay still: one stab’ll do it, especially with the oil on your blade.”

“It’s a shame they eat people,” she considered. “Intelligent, fast, powerful: if they stuck to animals they could live peacefully alongside humans.”

“Their intelligence doesn’t make them appreciate morality: if anything, it drives them away from it,” he said darkly, standing up and dusting off his armor where he had been sitting in the grass.

“I wish I could say that surprised me,” she frowned, standing with him. After giving each other a knowing look, they entered the forest.

They walked as quietly as possible, but he felt the presence of a creature somewhere around them. After a bit of a trek deeper into the woods, they came upon a clearing with a large stone on the forest floor. 

“Keep watch,” he whispered to Ciri, who nodded and kept a hand on her weapon. He knelt down to draw Yrden on the stone: purple light encircled them, flickering with magic. At that moment, he heard something coming from the forest, and he stood up in anticipation.

“Witcher,” came a strangled whisper from the trees.

“Show yourself,” he demanded. He considered drawing his sword, but decided to start somewhat diplomatically, hoping to avoid her shriek.

A pallid form slithered out from the shadows, blood still running down her arms and dripping from her hands.

“Feasting on villagers?” he asked, looking down briefly at the Yrden sign to make sure it was drawn correctly: he had never gotten it wrong, yet he was always a little nervous he would someday and be vulnerable to attacks.

“Hunting in packs?” the alp returned, looking at Ciri hungrily before leaping towards them.

He swung his sword as she got closer, but she dodged quite easily, circling their warded area in a prowl.

“I can smell your blood, through your skin,” she taunted.

“Come get it,” Ciri replied. He respected her attempt to get the creature to enter the ward circle, but it still made him nervous to hear her blatantly taunt a deadly monster.

“That might work on men,” the alp said with contempt, “but it won’t work on me.” He wasn’t sure if she meant men as in humans or men as in males.

She lept back into the woods: he should’ve anticipated that she was preparing to shriek, but his focus faltered and soon the sound pierced his ears. It was powerful, and he felt himself hit the ground despite not really noticing that he was falling. He saw Ciri crouching down, having withstood the wave better, but he was disturbed to realize that he could see her through the barrier of the ward… meaning he was outside of it. 

That realization came only seconds before the feeling of being dragged backwards. He began to fight back, but instantly weakened when he felt fangs pierce into his neck.

“NO!” Ciri screamed, and he could just barely make out that she was running out of the barrier of the ward. 

He opened his mouth to tell her to stop, to stay safe, but he was unable to speak.

He could hear a struggle behind him, and he was fighting with everything he had to stand up. He thought he almost had it, but then he was knocked forward, rolling back into the circle. It was a blast of energy, and as he landed he could see Ciri standing with her arm extended, having just cast Aard. She ran towards him, a look in her eye that he’d never seen before: she was a warrior, a Witcher, and she was ready to kill.

His head fell back onto the stone, too weak to hold it up anymore. Laying beside them was the alp, weakened from the blast and slowed inside the barrier of the ward. The last thing he saw before he passed out was Ciri’s sword, dripping with vampire oil, plunging into the creatures chest.

\---

After she had been waiting outside the room for what seemed like hours, the healer finally stepped out. She shot up from her seat; he shut the door behind him before she could even get a glance inside.

“He’ll be alright,” the healer began. Ciri knew he wasn’t finished, but she still let out a deep sigh of relief.

“But he needs a lot of rest,” he finished.

“Can I see him?” she asked hopefully.

“Not yet.”

Ciri slumped into her chair, disappointed even though it was the answer she expected. 

“The potion I gave him is strong, it’s been known to have some peculiar side effects: delirium, erratic behavior, insomnia…” the healer enumerated.

“Is he in pain?” 

“Increased aggression, decreased awareness of social cues and boundaries, slurred speech,” he continued.

“I asked if he was in pain,” she reminded him.  
“Yes, there will be some pain,” he finally answered.

“Damn, all those side effects and it doesn’t even help with the pain?” Ciri protested.

“Oh it helps: without the medication, he’d be in excruciating pain now, and would probably be having significantly worse nightmares from the Alp venom. Regardless, why ask a question if you’re not prepared for the answer?” He crossed his arms.

She was about to consider replying to that, but she heard Geralt cry out from behind the door. The healer turned and went back inside. She tried to follow him but he slammed the door behind him. Just a few seconds later, she heard a crash and Geralt’s voice bellowing:

“WHERE IS CIRILLA?!” 

She dashed inside, stopping at the sight of Geralt sitting up in his bed and holding the healer by the collar. He dropped the healer when he saw her, but due to his strength it turned out more like the healer being thrown backward into the medicine cabinet.

“Are you alright?” she asked, running to his bedside. He pulled her into an embrace, holding her a little too tight. “Geralt, you’re hurting me,” she said with a strained voice. He relaxed his grip on her and she took a deep breath to make up for the moment of lost air.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, “I am very strong.”

“You two are a fucking handful,” the healer groaned as he dusted himself off and left the room.  
“Do you feel okay?” She asked, putting a hand on his head to feel his temperature. 

“Mostly normal,” he answered, “a bit of loopiness.”

“You seem more talkative than normal,” she noted, “not that that requires much talking.”

“How long was I asleep?” Geralt asked.

She counted on her fingers. “About four hours.”

“I had the strangest dream,” he reminisced, “we were fighting a monster, and you saved my life, and I remember thinking ‘I’m in love with her.’”

Ciri gulped. He must have been thinking that he loved her, in a familial way. 

“Those first two things did happen,” she explained.  
“Am I dreaming now?” he asked innocently, looking around the room.

“No,” Ciri answered. _Am I?_ she wondered privately.

“Feels like a dream,” he mumbled, laying back down on the bed.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked, starting to stand up off the bed. She stopped when she felt a hand run through her hair.

“Pretty,” he grumbled. She turned to look at him but he didn’t look back, still staring at her hair. His fingers accidentally tickled her back. Ciri shivered.

“Are you thirsty? Do you need something?” She persisted.

“Some water would be nice,” he responded, and she sighed in relief that she got him off of whatever drug-fueled tangent he had gone on. She fetched him a mug of water, and handed it to him. He seemed to be struggling with motor control, because when he went to take a sip, he managed to dump half the contents onto himself and the bed. She hastily took it back.

“Okay, so you’re not ready for that. I’ll help you,” she offered, slowly lifting it to his lips. He closed his eyes, drinking easier now. After a moment he nodded and she took the water away.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

They sat in the quiet for a while, and Geralt looked to be falling asleep. She smiled at him, delicately getting up to leave so as not to disturb his rest. She jumped a bit when he grabbed her hand.

“Stay,” he commanded.

“You need to rest,” she reminded him.

“Yes, but stay,” he repeated, pulling her closer.

“I think I’ve had enough bed-sharing with you lately for a lifetime,” she lied.

“I haven’t, and I’ll hold you down if I have to,” he frowned. She shivered again, trying not to think about that innuendo.

“Fine, I’ll lay with you for a bit,” she relented, slipping next to him on the bed.

“Just until I fall asleep,” he said, already sounding pretty sleepy. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, his face leaning down onto the crown of her head. She could feel his breath on her scalp, and it was a strange sensation. Even stranger the sensation she felt in her groin. Geralt’s other hand reached to rest on her waist, and the touch lit up her skin with energy, even through her clothes.

“Thank you for saving me,” he whispered.

“Of course,” she whispered back. 

“I would be very upset if I died,” he considered.

“I don’t think you would be, because you’d be too busy being dead,” she replied with an eyeroll that he couldn’t see.

“No, I would be. I would be upset that I couldn’t protect you,” he explained. She didn’t say anything, what was there to say? A few moments passed, and she could tell he had fallen asleep by the way his chest rose and fell slowly. 

She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she certainly jolted awake when she felt something warm tickling the back of her neck. She realized it was Geralt, prodding at her ear and neck and shoulder with his lips. She didn’t want to run away- it felt wonderful- but she certainly tensed up at the contact. She felt the hand on her waist tighten, holding her close to him.

“Mmm,” he hummed contentedly into her ear, nuzzling where her neck met her shoulder. She squeaked unintentionally, partially out of confusion and partially as a response to the undeniable tingle that jolted directly to her most sensitive places. 

“Geralt?” she said quietly, not so much a question but an attempt to get some understanding about what was happening.

“You smell so nice,” he replied: his voice was so low and deep and it felt like the sound shot right through her. 

“You- you’re not yourself,” she justified, “these medications are making you behave strangely.”

“This morning,” he began, ignoring her comment entirely, “all I wanted to do was hold you like this, couldn’t think of anything else.” Ciri swallowed. “Why didn’t I just do it? It’s even better than I imagined.”

For a moment she really did consider turning around and kissing him, wrapping her body around him, letting him do whatever he (apparently) wanted. The moment passed quickly, though: what she wanted, even more than to be intimate with him, was for him to actually want her. The fact that he was only expressing any interest now that he was high off his ass on some potion indicated this was not the case. 

She jumped out of his grasp, and he finally let her go. 

“This is wrong,” she decided, more trying to convince herself than him.

“Who cares?” he whined.

“The normal Geralt- who isn’t on powerful medications- wouldn’t want this,” she continued.

“Then he’s an idiot!”

“Well, yeah, but it’s still wrong.” She shook her head as she looked away to avoid even having to see him now, when it took all her willpower to not give in.

“I knew it,” he groaned, dramatically throwing his head into the pillow, “you… you think I’m OLD!”

“No, it’s not that,” Ciri stammered, “please don’t take it personally.”

“I’m _ancient_ , why would I ever think you would be attracted to me?” He whined, voice muffled by the pillow.

“Oh, please don’t be upset,” Ciri continued, thoroughly flustered, “it’s not like that- I do find you attractive, it’s actually really frustrating.” Of course she was nervous to say all this, but it was better than having him think she wasn’t interested in him at all. “We’ll talk about this again when you’re well, alright? Because I want this to happen, I really do… I really, _really_ do, it’s just that now is not the time and-”

She stopped at the sound of snoring. Geralt had fallen asleep. She sighed, lingering for only a moment before leaving the room and quietly shutting the door behind her.

\---

Geralt awoke in a jolt, sitting up instantly. However, this proved to be a poor choice as it suddenly drew attention to his splitting headache. He groaned, holding his forehead as if he could just rub the pain away, which didn’t work. Looking out the window, it was pitch dark outside: it must have been the middle of the night.

The time under the influence of the medication was a blur. The line between reality and his feverish dreams was thin and wobbly: he remembered holding Ciri, and he could tell it was real because he could remember her smell; he remembered kissing her all the way down her body until she begged him to lick her cunt raw, which he knew was a dream because she would never say something like that (but wow, great dream); he remembered spilling water everywhere, and he deduced that really happened when he found damp patches on the sheets. 

He delicately got out of the bed, hoping to avoid disturbing his aching head. Opening the door to the room, he found Ciri sitting in the chair just outside, fast asleep with a book open in her lap. She clearly tried to wait for him to wake up, even into the wee hours of the morning, but sleep had taken her regardless. He smiled softly at the sight, glad that she couldn’t see the expression on his face at this moment. He removed the book from her lap, setting it on the nearby table, and then ever-so-carefully slipped his arms under her and picked her up. He carried her back to his own bed, resisting the desire to look at her while she slept because he knew it would hurt too much. A part of him still wondered what would happen if she woke up now while he held her this way: maybe he would get a second chance to kiss her, though that didn’t necessarily mean he should take it. He laid her in the bed gently, even pulling a light blanket over her since it was a cold night. Of course he considered laying with her, but he was pretty sure he physically couldn’t fit, and he was even more sure she wouldn’t want him to if she was awake to have a say in it.

Even though he had slept for probably over two-thirds of the past day, he knew there was more resting to be done, especially when morning was a few hours away. He sat down on the floor not far from the bed, resting his back against the wall. It wasn’t the most comfortable sleeping position, but on the bright side, the last thing he saw before he drifted off was Ciri’s petite silhouette rising and falling with her breaths under the blanket.

\---

She woke up with the sun just barely peeking through the window. For a moment she was confused as to exactly where she was or how she got there, but seeing Geralt sleeping on the floor gave her a basic timeline of what happened. She cursed herself for not staying up until he awoke, and cursed him for giving her the bed when he was the one who almost died.

She indulged herself by watching him sleep for just a moment. He was wearing a lot less clothes than usual, which was more noticeable when he wasn't under the covers in the bed. How could he still look so good in just some baggy undergarments? 

Of course he would wake up while she was still staring at him. Best of all, she didn't even notice him waking up. He was asleep, her eyes trailed down to his muscular thighs, and then as she worked her way back up to his chest, suddenly his eyes were open.

"Do you feel alright?" She asked, hoping he didn't notice her gawking.

"A bit sore, but yes. How long was I asleep?" He asked in return.

"Well, the hunt was only yesterday. But you've slept most of the time since then…"

"Most of the time?"

"You were awake for some parts of it." Ciri's voice suddenly became hesitant, "do you… remember what you said?"

"No," he stated plainly. Ciri sighed a bit.

"Surely it was all just the delusional ramblings of a medicated man," she said, trying not to sound disappointed.

"Seems likely," he shrugged, getting up off the floor. "We can head out after I pay the healer."

He left the room, grabbing his pouch on the way out. Ciri fell back onto the bed, mentally reliving everything absurd he had said and did: he held her, he said he loved her, he seemed to even be attracted to her. She knew it was all fake now, but at least she could appreciate how good it had felt when she thought it could be real.

\---

The longer he spent back in reality, the more pieces he put together of what he said and did. The healer definitely refreshed his memory on when he threw him into a wall, and charged him extra for the trouble. Only when Ciri asked what he remembered did his own words come back to him. He had foggy bits and pieces: he said something about love, something about protecting her… potentially he revealed his irrational fear of geese, he couldn’t be sure with how many strange dreams he had had. When she asked what he remembered, her tone was agitated, nervous. What did that mean? Was something he said upsetting to her?

Certainly if it was a confession of love, she would be upset. Yet, it seemed like there was a decent chance the cat was out of the bag there, and all he had done was deny it. He questioned if that was the right thing to do, but at the time he was working with such limited information. She had tried to kiss him the once (also maybe twice, if he was counting the time he chased off that boy, which he wasn’t counting because he never wanted to think about that again), but he had probably misinterpreted what was even going on there. Besides, one lapse in judgment on her part didn’t mean she was interested in him, and her being interested in him didn’t mean he was justified to pursue it. And yet, not being justified to pursue it didn’t mean he was justified to continue to lie to her about his feelings. 

Perhaps she was upset because she could tell he was lying when he said he didn’t remember. Even more likely, maybe she was upset because he had been a complete idiot: sending her mixed signals, almost kissing her and then leaving ( _twice_ ), telling her he loved her, telling her he didn’t mean to say that, sharing a bed with her but not saying anything about it.

Being around her meant he couldn’t think clearly, which is why he sent her to a tavern to wait for him while he “met with a client” in the afternoon, which really meant he was going to find a quiet place to sit and think.

After spending so much time and energy trying not to think about his feelings for Ciri, now he had to force himself to think about them, think about everything. It took much too long for him to admit to himself that he loved her, and even longer to unpack exactly what he meant by that. 

He walked through the town, noticing the way the locals reacted to him: disgust, intrigue, admiration, judgment. When Ciri looked at him, she was just… looking. It was simple, straightforward. Everyone else looked at him and was looking at a Witcher, but when she looked at him, she was looking at Geralt. More than anyone else, she saw him for who he really was, something he wasn’t even sure how to define. That didn’t mean she loved him back, but it did make him decide that he owed her the truth.

It might seem like a simple conclusion, but clearly it was a long time coming for him, because quite some time had passed when he returned to the tavern: sunset had just begun. 

As he walked up to the tavern door, he heard the sounds of drunken singing. He smiled to himself, sure that Ciri must be hating this. He looked for her first in the quietest corners: it took him a bit too long to notice her in the middle of the crowd, arm in arm with a few drunks, singing along gleefully. 

He stormed over, pulling her away from the ruckus. “Geralt!” she had announced when she saw him, which was only as soon as he was already grabbing her hand to lead her outside. 

“Where are we going?” she asked innocently.

“I leave you for a few hours and you start drinking? With strangers?” he admonished.

“No, no, you’ll like these guys, they’re _so_ great.” She leaned back towards the door, calling out to them: “Guys, come over here! You’ve gotta meet Geralt!”

He pulled her back from the door, gripping both of her shoulders.

“How drunk are you?” he asked nervously.

“ _Psh_ , I’m not _drunk_ ,” she scoffed, “I feel great!”

“That’s the drunkness!” he explained, his voice getting uncharacteristically high from shock.

“Could you, like, chill out?” she complained. “Why does it even matter? Since when do you care what I do?”

He started to respond but she interrupted.

“Oh, that’s right,” she continued, “you don’t care what I do _unless_ I’m doing it without you. Especially having fun without you.”

“That’s not true,” he pouted.

“Well, I decided I don’t care what you think of what I do anymore. I,” she poked his chest, pushing for emphasis with each following word, “am getting over you.”

“‘Over’ me?” he repeated disbelievingly.

“Mhmm,” she confirmed, nodding her head. Her smile faded though, and she grabbed at her forehead in pain. “Ow, that hurt.”

“Damn it, Ciri,” he groaned, picking her up in spite of her protests, “why can’t both of us be sober and of sound mind simultaneously, so that I can tell you that I’m in love with you?” 

Even saying it aloud when he knew she would never remember made him unduly nervous.

“Put me down!” she demanded, beating at his back with her fists. 

“I will, once we’re in a bed,” he promised.

“Ooh, carrying a drunk woman to bed: must be a real stretch for you!” she mocked.

“Never this drunk,” he mumbled.

“Do you have any idea what it’s been like, Geralt?” she asked, her tone more serious.

“What _what_ has been-”

“Watching you parade around, looking like that, doing all that horrible stuff you do, sleeping with all the horrible people you sleep with,” she enumerated.

“‘Parade’?” he asked in bewilderment.

"And I mean, come _on_ , I understand that you would never want to be with me, but there's no need to rub it in."

“Ciri, you need to stop talking. You’ll regret saying this in the morning.”

“I regret so much, what's one more?" 

He didn’t respond to that, which he realized was the best way to keep her from talking. So the two of them walked the rest of the way in silence, and thankfully nobody seemed to mind him walking through the town with a girl flung over his shoulder.

When they reached their room in the inn, he had to get a good balance to hold her and unlock the door at the same time.

He dropped her onto the bed, for the briefest moment forgetting why he wasn’t actually taking her to bed in the way he wished he could.

“We’ll have to share again, won’t we?” she whined.

“Don’t act so put out about it,” he admonished.

“What’s the point of getting drunk if you’re not going to sleep on the floor?” she posited.

“Now that you say it, I would much prefer to be drunk before doing this,” he pondered, sitting down on the floor.

“Then drink!” she cheered. “We’ll have so much _fun._ ”

“I have to stay sober to take care of you,” he explained.

“Boo,” she moped, falling back into the mattress.

Some self-punishing part of himself wanted to lay down with her, but the rest of him was either too angry at her or remembered too well how painful it was before. Not that the floor wasn’t painful, because it was, but in a way he was much more used to. Why were there so many Witcher trials about preparing to endure physical pain, but none for emotional pain?

\---

She woke up with a headache unlike any other. All she wanted to do was never move again… but then she had no choice, immediately jumping up to run to the bathroom to vomit.

Nothing quite like being profusely ill with your head in a toilet to get you to rethink your life choices. If there’s a time to drink until you black out, which there isn’t, it definitely wouldn’t be the first time you ever drink.

She emerged from the bathroom slowly, covering her eyes to block the bright sunlight streaming in through the window

“Sleep well?” Geralt asked mockingly.

“Shut up,” she groaned. “Sorry you slept on the floor, by the way.”

“I’d rather be in my place than yours right now,” he shrugged.

“And yet, both are my fault,” she sighed.

His silence said more to her than words probably could.

“I’m going to take a bath,” she grumbled, hurrying down the hall to get away from the awkwardness as fast as possible.

It was a rough morning. A warm bath helped somewhat, but it also made her lightheadedness a bit more apparent. The nausea was the worst part, but it went away the fastest. Geralt lent her a potion or two that helped with some of it, which she appreciated even with the disappointment she sensed from him.

He let her have a day off, buying one more night in the room so they wouldn’t have to leave until tomorrow. More than anything it was just boring: reading strained her eyes too much, and she felt too sickly to run or climb or do anything else exciting. Even the festival didn’t look too appealing, though she had gotten some fun out of listening to the music and watching dancers through the window.

In the late afternoon, Geralt returned from some errand-running with fruit and water for her: they sat across from each other on the floor and ate in silence for a while.

“How much do you remember from last night?” he asked suddenly. She remembered enough to know why he sounded so nervous asking her about it.

“You said something important. I remember thinking it was important and that I should remember it,” she pondered, popping a grape in her mouth.

“Do you remember it?”

“No.”

“Good,” he said, but she sensed sarcasm.

“Will you tell me again?” she requested hesitantly. 

“I probably should,” he sighed. Yet, he didn’t speak for a while. She was about to ask him to spit it out when he finally started talking.

“For a while now, I think I’ve been doing you a disservice. I kept something from you and now it’s gotten in the way of your training. You should study full time at Kaer Morhen, and stop being my apprentice.”

Her jaw dropped: she was thankful she wasn’t chewing anything at the time, it would’ve fallen onto the floor.

“I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you,” he said sternly.

“So that’s it? You’re telling me to leave?”

“Well, I think it might be for the best-” 

“Is this some kind of joke?!” she asked, deeply confused.

“I wish it was,” he replied, sounding sad. She stood up, trying to get her wits about her for a moment, and he stood up with her.

“I don’t believe this,” she said quietly, covering her face with her hands.

“Ciri, it’s not your fault- it’s me, I have a problem,” he explained.

“Damn right you have a problem!” she yelled, waving her arms in frustration.

“Calm down,” he requested, reaching out to push her arms down. She backed away.

“You know what your problem is? You don’t know how to feel anything anymore,” she said, this time quieter and more restrained.

“My problem is that I can’t be a good teacher to you: you deserve someone who isn’t so-” he began.

“Fickle?” she suggested.

“You deserve someone who can be objective, I’m too close to you to be fair with you,” he explained.

“Since when does a Witcher need an objective teacher? Vesemir is like a father to you,” she countered.

“I’m not your father,” he growled.

“Damn right you’re not,” she nodded angrily, “you’re not even my friend! No friend would treat me this poorly!”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” he implored, “I’ve failed you as a teacher. You need someone different.”

“But I only want you!”

She didn’t like how that came out, but she tried to ignore it.

“I’m the one person who can’t teach you, Ciri,” he said quietly, looking away.

“Oh, cut the ‘tortured, brooding warrior’ act, will you?” she pleaded mockingly with crossed arms.

“I’m in love with you,” he said quietly.

Her arms dropped to her sides, her shoulders dropped, her back straightened: it felt like her entire body reset, a complete reversal from anger to shock. She didn’t say anything. She just stared at him blankly, mouth agape and eyes wide. He didn’t look back at her.

“Please don’t hate me,” he continued, “I never meant for this to happen.”

“You fell in love with me,” she repeated in a daze. 

“Yes, I know how awful it sounds,” he hung his head even lower, looked dejected and ashamed.

“You fell in _love_ with me,” she repeated oncemore, “and your plan was to stop training me because of it?”

He looked up at her, seeming confused. 

“Well, yes,” he replied.

“You didn’t start by telling me the truth,” she remembered, “you started by straight-up firing me as an apprentice. You didn’t give me a choice, you told me I had to go.”

“There is no other choice, I can’t train you if I’m attracted to you,” he stated as if it were obvious.

“Why wouldn’t you give me the whole truth and let me decide? If I’m really the victim here, shouldn’t I be the one who tells you what I think is okay?” 

“You’re the student. As your teacher, I have to make these sorts of decisions.”

“So I can’t be trusted to make decisions for myself?” she deduced.

“That’s not really what I-” he began.

“I’m just some helpless girl, then? I can’t even be allowed to know the truth?”

“I was going to tell you the truth, I tried to, but you were drunk,” he defended, his volume growing and his tone getting more agitated.

“What happened to ‘wise beyond your years,’ what happened to the man who actually thought of me as an adult who could choose my own fate?” 

“What happened to me?” he repeated indignantly. “Whatever happened to _you,_ eh? What happened to the girl I could always trust? Who always chose the right thing, the _responsible_ thing?”

“Oh, so disagreeing with you is choosing the wrong thing?”

“You’re clearly not understanding the intended teacher-student dynamic here.”

“Since when do you have to hide the truth from your students? Is that part of the Witcher curriculum?”

“Like I said, I tried to tell you the truth, because I thought you deserved to know, I thought you were mature enough to handle it, and now you’re going off on me for trying to protect you!”

“Protect me, or control me?”

Geralt scoffed. 

“Are you kidding? Since when could I control you? Lately it seems like you do everything just to spite me, just to do the opposite of what I would want for you.”

“If I had done what you wanted me to, you’d be lying dead in the forest, a midnight snack for an alp!”

“I just want you to be safe, why can’t you get that?”

“Safe from you?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes,” he replied. “To be totally honest, yes, you’re not safe with me because I’m attracted to you.”

“What, are you actually concerned you’re going to force yourself on me?” she pshawed. 

“No, but it’s not fair to you because of power dynamics, and previous relationships, and all that stuff,” he enumerated.

“What’s not fair to me is removing my chance at agency and making my own decisions. How can you not see the irony of telling me that it’s not right because you have power over me, but then turn around and completely abolish my empowerment by telling me what I have to do?” she put her hands on her head in disbelief, truly astonished by the stupidity of it all.

“I gave you agency, I gave you a chance to prove you’re responsible, and what did you do with it? You invite a stranger into your room with no tactical plan. You drink yourself sick surrounded by grown men you don’t know. You run outside a warded circle to take on a beast single-handed that nearly killed _me,_ someone twice your size and with multiple lifetimes more experience. You know, I came to you in that pub to tell you the truth, because I thought to myself, ‘yes she’s young, but she’s a grown adult and she can do with this information what she wants.’ After this whole drunken fiasco, I’m starting to think I was wrong about you- that you are still too immature. At this point I’m not even sure why I’m having this discussion with a CHILD!”

_POP!_

She didn’t feel like she chose to slap him, it just happened instinctively. She certainly put a lot of force into it, but she figured it didn’t hurt him much: his head barely even turned at the impact.

“How dare you?” she said quietly, shaking her head in complete shock at what he’d said. “For years, all I could do was want you. I loved you in a way I’ve never loved anyone, so much that I thought I would never feel so much for someone ever again in my life, so much that it got in the way of being normal and being okay. I kept it to myself, even though it killed me to have to hide anything from you, because I cared enough about you and our relationship- whatever it’s supposed to be- that I wouldn’t risk it. _You_ convinced me that I almost had a chance, so I took it, and you humiliated me: left me alone lying on the _ground_ , told me to stop bothering you and wait for you in a filthy pub. Then, when I have the audacity to do what people actually _do_ in pubs, specifically trying to _forget_ how poorly you had treated me, you accuse me of being immature?”

He didn’t say anything.

“All I ever did was be loyal to you, _faithful_ to you, for no reason. You never asked me to be, and yet you expected me to be, because we all know how well you took it when I so much as had a conversation with a boy my age. Every time I do something right, you say it’s random chance or ‘cheating’ or not enough, but when I do something wrong, _that’s_ who I really am: immature, childish.”

She looked away from him for a moment, lost in thought. “For all I know, you’re right. I mean, here I am waiting for you to figure out that we’re meant to be together, like some dumb girl who read to many storybooks and thought they were real.”

She turned to look at him again, but couldn’t read his expression: it was hard to see with tears filling her eyes anyhow.

“But the least you could do is be considerate. Stay away when I ask you to stay away. Have some respect for how hard this is for me, instead of feeding me just enough hope to keep going and then getting cold and mean again. Funnily enough, I actually expected you to be _gentle_ with my feelings, that one’s on me. But did you really need to stomp me into the ground? Did you really need to flaunt your unstoppable whorishness right in front of me, then turn around and act all innocent and ashamed over a kiss _that didn’t even happen_?!”

She calmed herself, trying to prevent her voice from faltering any more than it had. She looked right at him, directly into his eyes, and all she could do was shake her head in disgust.

“Fuck you,” she added. 

Part of her wanted to stand there and wait: wait for an apology, wait for a reaction, wait for him to grovel so she could feel vindicated. But she decided she had waited damn long enough. She turned away and opened the door, hoping to make it out of his earshot before the sobbing started (which would be difficult since his earshot was probably all the way down the road).

It all happened so fast that she barely had a chance to process it: one moment she was looking into the hall, walking away from Geralt, maybe forever; the next, she was being pulled back and she was in his arms and he kissed her. It was forceful but not brutal, passionate but not quite angry. She probably should’ve at least considered pushing away, pretending she needed to be convinced, but the thought didn’t even really cross her mind, and she was instantly returning the intensity as best she could. She ran a hand through his hair, pulling his head into her as if she could somehow kiss him more than she already was. 

She sobbed, a combination of still being caught up in the anger and sadness from before mixed with the powerful joy she felt now. Kissing him felt like coming home, it felt like everything had really been worth it, it felt like destiny fulfilled. The sounds of her crying were lost in the kiss, absorbed into Geralt- and on a metaphysical level as well, she felt that he was absorbing her pain, telling her everything would be alright, that he would be there for her.

He pushed her back into the door- not a slam, but a strong enough impact that she moaned against him unintentionally. She felt him sigh back, and the idea that she had an effect on him like this was so intoxicating.

He pulled away from her mouth and she gasped, instantly leaning forward to try to chase the kiss.

"Do you want this?" he asked, his voice sounding so deep and breathy.

"Yes," she panted, nodding quickly, "gods, yes, so much."

"Right now?" he clarified.

" _Yes_ , please, I think I've made it clear enough," she griped.

He chuckled a bit, leaning down and kissing along her neck. Not cute little delicate kisses, mind you: he was sucking on her neck so desperately she wondered if he thought she was covered in honey or something. Well, she would've wondered that if she weren't so focused on how good it felt. She had no idea her neck was so sensitive, in fact she wasn't even sure how anything could be more intense than this.

He tore open the first few buttons of her blouse, exposing more skin which he immediately launched a focused assault on. He unbuttoned the rest as he worked, running his hands under the fabric and over her skin as soon as there was room.

"I've wanted you for so long," he whispered against her chest, where he had been slowly moving towards her breasts, "so, so long." She could start crying again from pure joy just from hearing that.

He stopped for a moment.

"Well, not _that_ long. Only since you matured," he added. "I thought about it so much, too much," he continued.

He ran his hands up to her shoulders, sliding off her dress from there.

"Fuck, you're so beautiful," he added breathlessly, cupping her breasts in his hands.

She felt so exposed in the most titillating way. 

He helped her step out of her dress before picking her up and tossing her onto the bed. As he began to climb on top of her, she looked up and he suddenly stopped.

"You're afraid," he stated, leaning away from her.

"I'm not," she shook her head. He still leaned further back, and she sat up in the bed.

"You are, I can tell. You're scared of this." His voice sounded so broken-hearted, it tore through her.

"Only because it's everything I ever wanted and it's finally happening and it's my first time," she explained. "Weren't you scared your first time, just a little?"

He threw his head into his hands, looking horrified. 

"Ciri, I'm nearly 90 years old. My first time was probably around 70 years ago. If that's not proof that this is horribly wrong and that I'm not the man you should be doing this with, I don't know what is."

She felt tears welling up again. Each time she was sure he wanted her, each time the rejection stung harder. 

"We're meant to be together," she explained. "I'm your destiny, and you mine."

"Just because your father made a bride of a child surprise doesn't mean we should fall in love. Don't make me make this choice," he begged.

"It's not a choice, don't you understand? This is how it was always meant to be!" 

She suddenly felt self-conscious of her nudity, and she pulled the sheet up to cover herself.

"You should find someone your own age to do this with: you deserve that," he said, sounding defeated and exhausted.

"You're all I want Geralt," she sobbed, "you're all I ever wanted. I don't want anyone else."

"Doesn't matter, we can't do this," he reiterated, "I can't let you do this."

He stepped towards the door and opened it, and she felt like she could die of heartbreak if he left her now.

“Please, Geralt, please don’t leave,” she whimpered, “please don’t go.”

He stood in the open doorway, staring out into the hallway, but not yet moving.

“I need you,” she whispered.

He let out a long breath and stepped back into the room, shutting the door and locking it.

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” he growled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new update ASAP... don't get too worked up waiting for it ;) lmao


	4. Chapter 4

On some level, he was worried about his armor rubbing against her bare skin and scratching her. On some level, he was worried that this was all a horrible mistake. Those levels were not running the show now, though. The only level that mattered was the level that was on top of Ciri in the bed, kissing her with enough passion to make up for all the lost kisses he had ever wanted to give her before but couldn’t. 

It turns out hearing Ciri say that she needed him was more than his restraint could withstand. Something deep and primal in him responded to it, and he felt powerless to resist its command to comfort her. As she let out little moans against his tongue, he thought he might go weak in the knees- a rare sensation for him, if not one he had never felt before at all.

He ran his hands over her body so desperately you’d think he was going to get a quiz on it later. In a way, he was, because he knew he was going to think about this forever and if it was his only chance, he wanted to memorize every inch of her skin.

Her hands reached around to start taking off his leather tunic, and it took a lot of strength to pull his hands from her to help her get it off. It was worth it to feel the sensation of his skin against hers, though.

Her hands reached down to start pulling down his trousers, but he pushed them away.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he soothed, moving down to kiss her neck.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she whispered back, continuing to work at the lacing. He smiled against her, lightly biting at her neck. She arched her back, so he did it again, harder. She choked out a moan and he was afraid it would kill him. Nearly 100 years of surviving monsters and mutations and murderers and he might die because of the most perfect moan he had ever heard. 

“Fuck,” she whispered.

“Like it rough, I see?” he chuckled darkly. 

“Apparently,” she said between heavy breaths.

“So, you were bluffing before,” he clarified, kissing down to her chest, “you _are_ a virgin.”

“Oh, of course,” she said, almost laughing at the idea that he would believe otherwise.

“Good,” he growled. He could see her shiver just a bit at that. He ran his fingers lightly down her stomach, hoping to keep her shivering beautifully like that as long as he could.

His kisses trailed down until he gently sucked a nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the bud. She gasped, and a hand flew into his hair, the other still making progress on his trousers. 

He groaned as she pulled his hair, the feeling spurring him into catching her nipple in his teeth: just barely, but enough for her to feel a little danger. She squirmed under his grasp, pulling at his hair even harder. 

At that moment he felt his trousers open and a delicate, warm hand wrap around his cock. The feeling hit him so hard that he choked on nothing for a moment. He heard Ciri gasp as her hand explored it further. 

"Want it inside me," she demanded suddenly, literally trying to pull him closer to her by his dick (which, yes, was kind of painful).

"Good gods and all that is holy, _slow down,_ " he commanded, pulling away and out of her grasp.

"Please," she whined, looking up at him with those beautiful eyes and it was almost enough to make him give in.

"Ciri," he said much more seriously as he looked down at her, "have no doubt that I would give anything right now to plunge deep into you, fuck you into this mattress, and give you everything you want as fast and greedy as possible."

The look in her eyes as he said that was just delicious. Yearning, he could tell she was yearning for him so much that it physically hurt. He knew the feeling, he had become all too familiar with it recently.

" _Oh_ ," she shuddered.

"We need to be patient. You need to be ready," he explained.

"I'm ready," she begged, "I'm so, so ready."

"I know that you're wet," he said, "that's not enough."

"How did you know that?" she asked as if to accuse him of being so cocky that he assumed she was wet. 

"I know because I can smell it from here," he said in a low voice. She bit her lip, but she was blushing, too.

"It's incredible," he reassured, "I want more. I want to taste it."

" _Yes_ ," she hissed, fists clawing at the sheets as her back arched. He'd never seen anything like it: she was so sensitive, just talking to her about sex made her react the way other women did when it was happening. He couldn't wait to see what she did when he actually did anything to her.

In the spirit of not waiting, he began to crawl down, inching lower and lower. She got more and more exasperated as he went, panting under him like she'd run a marathon.

All his senses were tuned to her: before he could hear the sounds of the festival outside, now he only heard her heartbeat and her little whimpers; before he could smell the food in the rooms next door and the people passing by, now it was all her scent, all lavender and tree sap and sweat and leather; he could feel the blood pulsing in her veins underneath her skin, and he swore he could literally see her arousal coursing through her like a river of electricity.

He tried not to make a big deal out of seeing her pussy: he understood that having a man stare at your genitals from a few inches away would be a bit anxiety-inducing and could make one feel rather self-conscious and exposed, especially as a virgin. But wow, it was gorgeous. Most notable was the wetness… even knowing that she was so desperate he hadn't prepared for just how wet she was. The light blonde hairs she had were glistening with it, even her inner thighs are slick and shiny. He could hear the sound of her need, he could literally hear that her walls and clit were throbbing.

If he were a stronger, more disciplined man he would make her beg for it. But that required waiting to taste her so it was never going to work. He figured she deserved some instant gratification anyways.

He dove into it, pressing his open mouth against her fully, not even patient enough to tease her with his tongue or start slow with her at all. She sobbed in the most wonderful way, and he felt both her hands reach down into his hair. He licked pretty much everywhere he could find, trying not to focus too hard on her clit in case she wasn't ready for that much stimulation, but she had other plans: she pulled his head up by his hair, changing the angle so he was lapping directly at it. The feeling of Ciri taking control and showing him just how she liked it was indescribable. 

Her legs started to tremble and he clutched at them, hoping to calm her down. 

"I don't want to come yet," she panted, "I don't want to come until you're inside me."

Those words sent a shiver down his body, and a jolt of a reminder to his achingly-hard cock that "inside Ciri" was on the menu for the evening.

"You’re not ready yet," he growled, only barely pulling away to speak before continuing to lick her desperately and aggressively.

"Please, please," she begged, writhing and shaking as her pleasure became more intense, "I need it, Geralt, I need you to fuck me. I need to feel you inside me, I need you to make me come with your cock, I need you to come inside me-"

Geralt ripped himself away, grabbing her face and covering her mouth.

"Stop trying to get me to fuck you," he growled. "Where did you learn how to talk like that?"

He pulled his hand from her mouth so she could answer.

"I didn't, I just… that's how I feel," she said with a blush creeping onto her face.

"You're too tight," he explained, running a finger down through her folds but keeping his eyes on her face. "I don't want to hurt you."

"I don't care if it hurts, I need y-"

He clamped his free hand back over her mouth. He didn’t need any of that temptation right now.

He began to circle a fingertip at her entrance and her eyes widened knowing he was about to penetrate her with it. He took his hand from her mouth, trusting her to not beg him again but also wanting to hear her so she could tell him what she needed.

Instead of speaking, she reached up and pulled his head into hers, kissing him deeply. Knowing that she was tasting herself in his mouth made him feel dizzy and weak and shaky. He gently poked just the fingertip inside and she gasped against him. He pulled back from the kiss, looking down at her face as he pushed in deeper. He felt her clench and tighten around him, and he waited until she relaxed to move forward more. 

"Don't act so surprised," he joked, "I know you've done this to yourself before."

"Your fingers are bigger than mine," she noted. "Besides, how can you be so sure?"

"One, you're a teenager. Two, I heard you once."

She gasped, and he took the opportunity to push his finger in all the way. 

"You're not as sneaky as you think, sweetheart. Not the intended use of my Witcher senses, but yes, I heard you pleasure yourself and it was perfect. If only I knew then that one day I'd be the reason you were making those sounds."

"You already were; I thought of you when I did it," she blurted out, "always."

He twisted his finger inside of her, beginning to pull it back out and in, little portions at a time.

"Tell me what you thought about," he requested deviously. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, like she was immersing herself into the memories.

"Oh, Geralt, everything. I thought about how you would feel inside me, and how your cock would taste. I imagined you were telling me what to do, and I did it because I wanted to make you happy,” she described.

“That doesn’t sound like you at all,” he smirked. 

“It’s different when it’s sexual, and not just micromanaging,” she frowned. He decided that was a little too snarky so he pushed a second finger into her. 

She gasped, her eyes flying open. He realized that with the size of her hands, two of his fingers could easily be the biggest thing she’d ever had inside her: it certainly felt that way, with how tight she was around him.

“Fuck,” he whispered, not really meaning to say it aloud.

He pushed deeper into her, and her hands grasped at his arm. He stopped.

“Too much?” he asked quietly. She shook her head, relaxing her grip. He went slower this time, and her shaky, quiet breaths were unexpectedly arousing.

“Feels good,” she said quietly, and he started twisting his fingers inside her slowly. She bit her lip softly and it presented such a dilemma for him: he wanted to kiss her again, but he also wanted to watch her face, and he couldn’t do both. 

She ran her hands along his chest, and it tickled the scattered hairs there. Her touch migrated to his shoulders, and she braced herself against them with each thrust of his fingers. The size of her hands compared to his shoulders served as a dizzying reminder of how small she was… he wasn’t sure why he loved the feeling of it so much, but it felt like the only thing he could think about.

“ _Please_ ,” she whispered nearly inaudibly, so quiet he was sure only a Witcher’s ears could hear it. “ _Please_ ,” she repeated.

He leaned down to put his mouth against her ear, kissing it softly.

“Tell me what you need,” he requested gently. He brushed his thumb against her clit and her nails dug into his shoulders.

“I need you,” she said more confidently, opening her eyes and looking straight through him. “Please, Geralt, I need you.”

Were he thinking fully analytically here, he would’ve preferred to prepare her more thoroughly to prevent every chance at pain. Yet, he knew he would give in, and it wasn’t because of failing integrity or impatience for once. As she looked into his eyes, he could feel her need for him, and it felt more honest and tender than before. 

He kissed her, deep and slow. He pulled his fingers out so he could hold her properly, wrap his arms around her and squeeze her close. It might’ve been more helpful to tell her that he would give her what she needed so much, but as he kissed her, he felt that she knew.

He pulled her up from the bed so that she straddled him as he sat back on his feet. He felt like he could stay like this forever, just holding her and kissing her; She had other plans, though, and started to lift herself up and grabbing at his length to guide it to her entrance. Just the feeling of the head pressing against her was so overpowering. She pulled back from the kiss just enough to look at him, and he sensed that she was asking for a final permission, and a final reassurance. He didn’t even need to say anything, or nod to her: he told her to go ahead just by looking back at her.

That said, he had expected her to ease into it. As soon as he was inside her, she slammed down to the hilt. 

They both cried out, for different reasons. He had no idea what, but he knew something deeply important had happened.

He looked to her face and saw a tear running down her cheek. He kissed it away, cradling her face in his hands. Her eyes were closed, her face twisted in pain. He wanted to tell her that it would be alright, that he would be gentle with her, but as he looked at her to speak, she opened her eyes and looked back. Her expression softened, her sobs stopped.

“It’s you,” he whispered. “It was always you.”

Somehow he was sure she would understand even before he said it, never even for a second doubting that it would make perfect sense even though it wouldn’t have made sense to anyone else.

They never spoke again that night, because there was nothing that needed to be said. The only sounds were of their breaths and moans and skin-on-skin. And afterwards they both slept the unburdened, dreamless sleep of those who had found their destiny.

\---

“I brought you toast,” he said, monotone as usual. She nodded in a silent thank you and took it.

He sat beside her on the bed and they ate: it was quiet but not necessarily awkward… though it did verge on that.

“So, last night,” Ciri began, “is that… normally how it is?”

“You mean was that normal sex?” Geralt laughed, which he didn’t do often. “No, certainly not. That was abnormal, to say the least.”

“In a good way, right?” she hesitated.

“Of course,” he reassured. 

Ciri took another bite of toast.

“Were you using magic?” he asked suddenly.

“I wasn’t meaning to,” she answered, “but maybe I did on accident. Because sometimes it felt like I was-”

“Reading my mind,” he finished.

“Yeah,” she nodded.

“It was different, though,” he continued, “I could feel you there, in my mind.”

“I know, I could feel that you could… feel me… I don’t know if that makes sense-”

“It does.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly, finishing the food, “it does.”

Everything made sense in a new way now. 

“You’re not hungry for toast,” she said, “you want sausages.”

“You slept well but you want to go back to sleep anyways,” he countered.

“You think I look beautiful even though I just woke up and stuffed toast in my face,” she returned, blushing a little to think about it.

“You’re still sore from where I was inside you.”

She went to pull him into a kiss but he was already there, not that it surprised her. They fell back onto the bed and she wrapped herself around him again.

She was almost going to reach for his trousers to start pulling them off again, even though she knew he would stop her and say she needed time to recover, when there was a knock at the door.

"Check out was an hour ago," came the disgruntled voice of the inn manager.

"We're packing up now," Geralt yelled back.

"Should've been packing up an hour ago!" he replied through the door, and they heard his footsteps go back down the hall.

She could tell that he knew she would suggest staying and making love again, since they were already going to be late.

"Start packing," he demanded preemptively, leaning back to get off of her.

She sighed but complied, haphazardly throwing clothes into the sack. Her dress was still on the floor in a little pile where he had taken it off of her the night before, and she smiled at the memory.

Thinking back on their argument, she wasn't angry by what he'd done (or tried to do) anymore. Yesterday it had felt like a very offensive thing to do- trying to fire her as an apprentice because he was attracted to her, that is- but today she understood where he was coming from. As much as she had fantasized about Geralt being unabashedly interested in her, in retrospect she appreciated that he didn't leap on the opportunity to sleep with her right away. She was conflicted and guilty about her love for him at first, probably for the best that he was too.

She didn't sense the guilt on him anymore. She wondered if it was just wishful thinking, but she felt like she knew he returned her affections entirely. Then again, all morning and even last night she had felt she knew his thoughts and feelings, and she knew he could feel hers too. It would probably sound ridiculous if she tried to tell someone but she wasn't so worried about it being ridiculous: it felt obvious, established in her own mind.

She was almost done packing and, naturally, her mind was on other things. Mainly, she was wondering how she could improve her ability to tempt Geralt. She conceded on leaving the room as fast as they could, but next time she knew she was getting her way. 

\---

The uncertainty of yesterday felt so foreign to him now. The uncertainties of a lifetime were forgotten as well, including his doubt in the power of destiny. He didn’t understand it all yet, but he was very aware of the growing connection between Ciri and himself. He couldn’t describe it but he felt it, something pulling them together. Maybe he had always felt that, but now he could _see_ it- well, not literally see it, but he could metaphysically see it which is not the same as feeling it: see, I told you he couldn’t describe it.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked as they loaded up the horses.

“We can just… go anywhere?” she asked nervously.

“There are monsters everywhere,” he shrugged, “so why not go somewhere interesting? Wherever you’d like.”

She seemed a little shy about it for a moment, but then got more confident.

“The coast. I’d love to see the ocean,” she said after a pause.

“Then we’ll go,” he decided, mounting Roach.

The ride out of the town was interesting: the festival was winding down, and the energy in the air was more somber than before. Not many partygoers were up so early, or at least not many of them seemed to be enjoying it, since everyone they passed seemed tired and haggard. Meanwhile, he felt better rested and more awake than he had in some time. He found himself looking over at Ciri on her horse more than he meant to. She looked stately, focused, self-assured. He was probably reading into her posture while riding a horse too much, though.

The weather was nice at first, until the overcast clouds blew away and the sun began to beat down. 

“Damn,” Ciri whispered to herself, wiping the sweat off her brow.

“The sword gets heavier on days like this, eh?” he quipped.

“At least I only have the one. I don’t envy you right now,” she groaned. 

He watched as she tied her hair up into a bun to catch the breeze on her neck. When the sun shined in her eyes for a moment before she closed them, her irises reflected with shimmers of light green and teal.

“I can feel your stare,” she said.

“I know,” he replied.

She looked over at him, and he couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at him so sweetly, if it had even happened at all.

“There’s a village not too far from here. Let’s stop there for a break from the heat,” he suggested. She only nodded, and they turned back to continue down the road.

“If you could do anything for a living besides witchering, what would you do?” Ciri asked.

“This is the only thing I can do,” he said plainly.

“Yes, but what if you could do anything?”

“I’m not good at anything else,” he clarified.

“That’s not true. You have applicable skills.”

“Applicable to what?” 

“War. Or prostitution.”

“Sounds pretty dystopian,” he grumbled.

“But I mean, what would you do if you had the time and skill to do anything?”

“What’s with the interrogation?” he asked.

“I’m just curious,” she shrugged. 

“Are you trying to get to know me better or something? Ciri, you already know me better than anyone else.”

She paused for a moment.

“Not Yen?”

“She would be a close second, I suppose.”

“I always figured there were loads of things you told her that you never talked with me about,” she admitted.

“When you were little, maybe.”

“And now?”

“Now you’re grown,” he said.

“So you can talk with me about anything?” 

“Ciri, you’re smart. You can follow this logic on your own.”

“If I asked you something unsavory, would you answer honestly?” she asked after a moment.

“You want to know how many women I’ve bedded,” he sighed. He wondered if she would ask how he knew, but then he realized that of course she knew how he knew. He looked over at her again and she was staring ahead, watching the path as if it were actually interesting to look at it, which it was not.

“I used to want to be a caretaker to animals,” he said. She laughed incredulously.

“You know better than to think that will work on me.”

“Fair enough, but you can’t blame me for trying to satisfy your curiosity in a simpler way.”

“Just answer my question,” she said coolly.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s all in the past now.”

She looked back at him, but he couldn’t read her expression. 

“Are you worried that you’re not special to me?” he asked.

“No,” she said, turning back to face the road.

“Ciri, if you have any doubts of how much you mean to me-”

“It’s not about that. I just wanted to know.”

“I don’t understand what’s so interesting about it to you,” he sighed, “but I’ll tell you if you want to know, because I wouldn’t want you to worry about me keeping secrets.”

She looked at him expectantly. He had kind of hoped she would drop it, even after he offered the information, but clearly she was being stubborn as usual.

“To be entirely honest with you, Ciri… I’ve lost count.”

Her expression barely changed, but just enough that he saw… something not great, to say the least. 

“Venture a guess?” she requested quietly.

He was never great at doing math in his head.

“Well, if my first was about seventy years ago… and there are maybe five or six women a month…” he began to think aloud. 

Her eyes went wide.

“Geralt!” 

“What?” he asked, looking at her.

She was always great at doing math in her head.

“Do you realize how many that would be?” she asked, looking at him like he was crazy.

“No, how many is it?” he asked innocently.

Her head fell into her hands in exasperation.

“Ciri, this is why I didn’t want to talk about this,” he groaned.

“It’s fine,” she said, voice muffled by her hands.

“This might seem crude, but most of them I can’t tell apart at this point,” he began. “Please don’t compare yourself to them.”

“Don’t speak poorly of them just to flatter me.”

“No, I’m not speaking poorly of them. I’m just speaking highly of you,” he explained. “What happened last night was nothing like those encounters. You’re completely different; this-” he motioned to the space between them- “is completely different. I would forget everything else if I could, to make you happy. But more than that, I would like it if we could forget about my past: all that matters is the future, and the only future I have is with you.”

She looked back at him, and he struggled to interpret her expression. Then her eyes trailed down to his chest, and his arms.

Oh. He knew _that_ expression.

At that moment, they reached the crest of the hill and he realized they were just outside the village. 

“Would you like to stop for that bath?” he offered.

She nodded slowly, and he tried not to smile too much.

\---

The second they reached the door to their rented bath, she was all over him. She kissed him like she wouldn’t get another chance for a hundred years, pulling him into the room by his collar. She worried it was too intense but he didn’t seem to mind, following her inside and kicking the door shut behind them. 

“Need you now,” she whispered as she pulled away from the kiss just for a moment. He chuckled against her lips.

“What you need is patience,” he soothed. She growled a little at that, clawing at his shirt to try to hastily unbutton it. 

“Wait, Ciri, the bath-” he began a warning, but she didn’t notice until it was too late. Turns out if you walk backwards towards a bathtub long enough, you’ll fall in.

She was only under the water for a moment, and she managed to hold her breath in time. Geralt fell to the side of her, which was surely for the best, since falling on top of her into a bath might’ve caused a bit of damage.

She popped right up out of the water, and he came after. He looked like a cat that had fallen into a lake or something: grumpy, with water dripping from his hair.

She tried not to laugh, she really did. He was clearly not so amused, but that just made it funnier. 

He swam towards her (which really just meant taking one step in the water, it wasn’t _that_ big of a bath) and the look on his face made her more excited than he probably intended.

If his plan was to wipe the smile off of her face, it worked: he wrapped his arms around her and bit lightly on her neck. She instantly gasped and melted into his touch. His fingers started to trace the places that her wet blouse was sticking to her skin, and then ran down to where her nipples had hardened and were visible through the now-transparent fabric. 

“Mmm,” she involuntarily moaned, biting her lip to try to keep quiet. 

“I can’t fuck you in the water,” he said against her neck. Even with everything that was going on, the vulgar language still surprised her just the slightest: not in the sense of being against swearing, moreso just that it brought a very straightforward image in her mind of what was going to happen.

“Then let’s get the fuck _out_ of the water,” Ciri smiled. She gasped as he picked her up suddenly, carrying her as he stepped back out onto the floor. They were drenched, dripping water all over the floor, mostly fully clothed but quite disheveled, and yet she couldn’t care less about it.

He set her down, letting her find her balance to stand up, and began kissing her again as he peeled off her wet clothes. She followed suit, though she needed his help to get his shirt pulled over his head. He pushed her against the wall: not forcefully or aggressively, just enough so he could press himself against her as he kissed her, which she loved the feeling of.

As she went to undo his trousers, she had an idea, though she was afraid she wouldn't be any good at it. When she felt the lacing come undone and his cock release from the fabric, she hesitantly pulled away from the kiss and sank down to her knees.

She looked up at him and his expression was some mix of shock, lust, and admiration. She sensed his approval and took him into her hand.

She was glad she hadn't stared it down like this the first time… she had noticed it was big, but at eye level it wasn't just "that's nice" big, it was "you want to put that where???" big. She would've worried that it wouldn't fit inside her; in fact, she was currently worried she wouldn't be able to fit it in her mouth.

She started with a curious lick, just to taste it. Didn't taste like much of anything which was actually a relief. She delicately wrapped her lips around the head and let her tongue explore the shape and texture of his skin.

She looked up and saw how strained he looked, but she could tell it was a good thing. He was actually blushing, she wasn't sure she had seen him do that before. He leaned a hand against the wall behind her, as if he were exhausted merely from standing there; his other hand reached down and caressed her face. She decided to press forward and take more into her mouth, and the hand on her face moved to grip at her hair encouragingly.

Already she felt her jaw getting sore from having to open so wide to accommodate him. 

"Beautiful," Geralt said absent-mindedly as he looked down at her lovingly. She looked back to him and he bit his lip in the most seductive, magical way. She whimpered a little at the sight, and loved the way it sounded with her mouth full.

She began to set a pace, moving her mouth over the portion of him she could manage to fit, while using her hand to stroke the rest of him.

In her mind she could almost hear him moaning and begging and spilling his guts about how much he had dreamed of this and how good it felt, while in reality all she was hearing was heavy breathing with the occasional quiet groan. 

It was only when the imagined sounds lined up perfectly with when his hand scrunched into a fist in pleasure that she realized they were not imagined at all but part of the strange psychic bond she had felt before. The thought that he really was this ecstatic inside about what she was doing spurred her into further action, and she suddenly took as much of him as she could, getting about halfway down before the tip hit her throat. His moan was definitely out loud this time, choked and strained and perfect.

She knew he was going to ask her to stop, so that she wouldn't spoil his appetite for the main event (not necessarily in those words), so she leaned away, her mouth making the most wonderfully filthy _pop_ sound as it pulled off of his length.

"Ciri," he said breathlessly, and though it was sort of vague to simply say her name, she knew exactly what he meant.

She stood back up and he wrapped his arms around her, not kissing her but just looking at her face. He reached up to move a stray lock of hair out of her face. She wanted to ask him, beg him even, to take her now, but as she looked into his brooding yellow eyes, she felt comforted that he would provide for her and keep her safe and make her feel wonderful.

He spun the both of them around to face the tub, but then turned her away from him. She felt arousal immediately warm her entrance as he gently bent her over the edge of the bath tub.

He pulled her trousers down with a slow reverence that made her shiver. She could tell she was noticeably wet by the way the groin of the clothing ever so slightly stuck to her before coming off.

Naked, bent over a bath tub with Geralt behind her. What a feeling.

She couldn't see him but she didn't need to: she heard his sigh and knew exactly how much this was having an effect on him. 

She felt the head poke at her and she was already weak in the knees. He entered slowly but without pause, one long stroke until he was completely inside. She wasn't entirely proud of the sound she made, but she didn't care much because all she could process was how good he felt inside her. She was instantly filled with the desire to beg for more or even just ramble about how amazing he felt and how she was already a few moments from orgasm when they had just barely begun. 

"Fuck, yes, Geralt," she moaned loudly, "you're so good, I'm going to-"

A hand pulled at her hair, interrupting her thought.

"You have to be quiet," he hissed. His pace picked up quickly, counterintuitive to his request for less noise.

"What's your deal with always telling me to be quiet?" she asked, struggling somewhat to form sentences when all she wanted to do was focus on the feeling of how her walls stretched when he plunged into her.

"People could hear you," he said through gritted teeth.

"And? They're getting free entertainment. Maybe I want them to know how good you're making me feel with that _big_ -"

A hand wrapped around her throat: it wasn't holding tightly enough to physically stop her from speaking, but psychologically it did the trick. She felt his body press against hers as he leaned down and pulled her closer.

"I don't want them to hear you," he growled into her ear, "because I don't want anyone but me to know how you sound when you're being pleasured like this."

Instantly she felt her knees buckle as a wave of orgasm crashed into her. His arm caught her, holding her up while she rode through it. He didn't stop thrusting and she felt like the intensity was building to impossible levels; like if he kept going, she would never stop coming.

She suppressed the sounds as best she could, and what emerged was something like a moan but strangled and shocked.

"Yes," Geralt encouraged quietly, "come for me, Ciri."

His voice had such an effect on her, she was sure it was some sort of Witcher power she didn't know about.

Her head fell forward, causing the ends of her hair to dip into the bath water, and her hands gripped at the edges of the tub for dear life.

"Come inside me, please," she barely choked out through the blinding intensity of her pleasure.

His speed increased again and she could tell his orgasm was fast approaching: she wanted to talk him through it but was too lost to summon any words.

"Ah, fuck," he said quietly, his hands grabbing into her hips as he pounded into her. She couldn't physically feel him finish inside her but she could tell by how his body quivered that it was happening. There was something so erotic about it to her, something deep within her that told her this was right and good and, most of all, meant to be.

After a moment of just recovering there together, he slid out and motioned for her to get into the tub. She did and he followed, noticeably relaxing as he entered the hot water. He pulled her to his side and she rested her head on his chest. His arm wrapped around her shoulder and she wanted to stay like this forever.

They did stay that way for a while, but at some point he positioned her in front of him and cupped water in his hands, releasing it to wash her back and shoulders. He poured some hair salve into his hand and began to carefully run his fingers through her hair until it was lathered completely. After that, he silently guided her head back to submerge her hair and scrub at her scalp, washing it all away.

When he was done, she took her turn, using her hands to massage him and rub oil and soaps into his skin. She felt that there was something sacred about it: she'd never been so interested in bathing, not even taking this much care when she cleaned herself.

They left the bathhouse and went on their way to finish the rest of the day's journey. She felt very glad they had decided to wait out high noon at the bath, because the weather got much more temperate in the afternoon. They didn't talk much on the trip, and when they did it was mostly small talk or things of little importance (even though the conversations themselves were very important to her).

As the sun began to set they were entering a forest, and they figured it was as good a place as any to make camp. Geralt was tending the fire as the sun set behind him, and Ciri thought he looked lovely with the golden light hitting him from all directions.

“I can already tell it’s going to be a cold night,” she observed, watching the clouds move quickly in the sky.

“That’s what the fire is for,” he explained.

“Don’t be short,” she frowned.

Both of them perked up, having sensed something- a person walking in the forest. When they turned to the trees, they probably couldn’t have been more surprised by anyone else appearing but Yennefer entering from the treeline.

“What are you two doing in this forest?” she asked curiously.

“We’re halfway to the coast, what are you doing in this forest?” Ciri asked cheerily.

“I _was_ hunting out some rare potion ingredients, but now I’ve decided I’m joining you for a quick overnight stay in the woods,” she replied with a friendly smirk.

Yen looked over at Geralt and for a split second they made eye contact. He looked away but it was too late; her expression darkened. For one brief moment, there was the stillness of a shared knowing between them. She knew, and they knew that she knew. Ciri would’ve given anything to have known that the previous second would be her last to appreciate not worrying about how Yennefer would react to all of this; the sick, sinking feeling in her stomach hit instantly. 

Yennefer broke into a sprint, and Geralt started to crawl backwards away from her but it was clearly no use: she tackled him and grabbed him by the collar.

“ _What did you do to my daughter?!_ ” she screamed, shaking him aggressively.

Ciri ran to defend him, to explain everything, but with just a flick of her hand in Ciri’s direction, Yennefer threw her several metres back and she landed roughly against the cold forest floor. The blast extinguished the fire.

“You don’t understand,” Geralt was saying as he tried to fight her off and dodge a few stray punches, “I love her, I’m in love with her.”

“Is that supposed to comfort me? You’re sick, you’re fucking disgusting, this is blasphemy-” she launched into a tirade.

At that moment, the sun set, and they were plunged into darkness.

Ciri was sure she’d never sobbed so hard in her life. Geralt may have never felt like her father in the vast majority of ways, but Yennefer had felt like a mother, even if she could never replace her real mother or grandmother. And whether she meant it or not, to hear Yennefer say those things felt like an indictment of Ciri even if the intended recipient was Geralt. Maybe it was because of this peculiar connection that it felt like everything Yen was saying to him felt like it was being said to her, but regardless, it hurt. 

She wanted to scream at them to stop, but she could barely speak with how hard she was crying. She had started to tune out Yennefer’s words, they all blended together in the mess of her mind, and the vitriol behind them was all the same anyways.

She was so lost in the pain and the anger that it almost took her a moment to realize it had gone dead silent. She looked up from the ground and saw Yennefer laying on the ground, grasping at her throat. Geralt was leaning over her, trying to help but failing. Ciri gasped and began to run to help, but suddenly Yennefer coughed and rolled over, breathing raspy, deep breaths. It was only then that Ciri realized it was her own magic that had been hurting her. 

Geralt looked up at her and instantly she felt his anger. It was pretty much the anger she would expect from a man who was looking at the girl who attacked his lover.

She stepped back, and his expression softened, but it just felt like he was trying to mask his anger, not like it was fading.

She stepped back again, and none of them said anything: Yennefer and Geralt just stared at her, and as Ciri looked between them, she couldn’t help but notice how cohesive they felt. A unit, a couple, a partnership. They were together on the ground, on the other side of the fire, staring at her with the same dumbfounded and angered expression. Ciri was alone, and she felt like she had violated something, gotten in the middle of something not worth involving herself in. 

She closed her eyes, shaking her head as if she could shake this all away, erase everything and start over. She stepped back and she was falling, for longer than expected. As her back hit the ground, she felt something warm rush over her head. She shot up and looked back: it was the ocean. She looked around wildly, and as far as she could see was sandy beaches and scattered trees. 

She figured that if, a few months ago, she had accidentally portaled herself somewhere unknown, she would instinctively call out for Geralt: partially just in case he wasn’t far away, mostly out of emptiness and fear. 

She was different now than she was a few months ago. She was different than she was yesterday: she felt like she had grown up more in a week than she had maybe the past two years combined.

She stopped crying. She stood up and took a deep, calming breath. 

She knew she was alone: the presence of Geralt that she had begun to sense naturally was gone. It was warmer here than it had been in the forest, but she felt colder in spite of it. She almost felt like half a person without Geralt around, but she knew he would be fine: he had Yen. She looked out into the ocean: the waves were coming gently, rolling onto each other. The only sounds were of water hitting water, wind in the trees, distant seagulls cawing.

She was alone, but there was no use in wasting energy crying over it now: she ventured into the treeline to start working on a fire.


	5. Chapter 5

“Where’s she gone?” he asked desperately, but Yennefer was already trying to track her. He watched, waiting for a sign that she had found something, but after a moment her hands fell down in defeat. 

“All that power and you can’t trace a portal made by an apprentice?” he asked in frustration.

“It’s complex magic,” she said with a glare. “She didn’t know where she was going, how am I supposed to know?”

“So she could be anywhere?” 

“I’m assuming that was sort of her goal.”

Geralt growled, his head falling into his hands. 

“I told you to stop reading my mind all the time,” he grumbled quietly.

“I told you to not fuck my daughter- oh wait, I forgot to mention that was a boundary for me, because I foolishly assumed it would go without saying,” she snapped back.

“I’m sorry you had to see that.” He was trying to placate her, because the truth was she _didn’t_ ‘have’ to see it, she chose to see it by violating his mind: an unattractive habit of hers.

“No word of sorry for the act itself, then?” she spat.

“Nope. And you’ll never get one.”

Standing up to her felt good, but damn, if looks could kill…

“Excuse me?” she asked incredulously.

“I’m in love with her. It’s not a one-night stand or a strange fetish or a drunken mistake. I can’t regret it; We’re destined for each other. She’s my destiny, Yen.”

She sighed and looked away from him, anger shifting to sadness. 

“I thought I was your destiny, once,” she reminisced.

“Destiny isn’t a place, it’s a path,” he theorized, “and I’m thankful that you were on my path. You’re just not where it ends.”

“It ends with her, doesn’t it?” she asked defeatedly. He reached out and placed his hand on hers, and she looked back up at him. He understood the fear in her eyes: fear of being alone. It was something he understood so well that it felt normal, just a part of daily existence, just an ominous shadow that follows you everywhere you go.

“I hope you’ll be there with me, to the end. I’ll always be your friend, and Ciri loves you dearly.”

Yennefer looked unsure, but eventually let out a short breath and seemed to relax.

“You seem so sure, I guess that’s what is so frustrating about it. You were never so sure about me, I think.”

“Were you sure about me? We barely got along half the time,” he remembered.

She laughed a little, and it was a lot less sad than one might expect.

“You’ve got me there. If we had been sure, we would’ve married. Or at least made some kind of commitment. Or at least fucking _talked_ about it.”

“If you knew how I felt, you would understand. It’s just… right. I know it’s wrong, but it’s right.” Geralt shook his head. “I’m not making any sense.”

“No, I get it,” she reassured. “Or I’m trying to.”

“That’s all I can ask of you,” he shrugged. She nodded slowly, like she was still processing everything (understandably).

Geralt turned to the fire, trying to restart it. Suddenly he felt Yennefer crouch beside him, and as if it were no effort at all, she magically lit the kindling for him.

He looked over at her, face now illuminated orange from the small fire, and smiled. Why should he look differently on their time together, just because he was entering a new time? When something ends, something begins.

That said, he feared now that this was going to end before it even properly began: not that he had ever had an amazing understanding of a healthy relationship, but this couldn’t possibly be a good start. He could feel that she was shutting him out, and it didn’t feel passive but active, like she was continuously working to keep their connection severed. 

He reached out and he felt glimpses, but nothing he could work with. He felt hurt, anger, confusion, but he wasn’t sure if it was hers or his own. 

He closed his eyes, hoping to focus on the unstable connection, but it wasn’t very helpful. Even if he couldn’t use it to figure out where she had gone, he just wanted to feel her again: he had taken her near-constant presence for the past few years for granted. He was even starting to miss the annoying stuff. Like how she always woke up outrageously early because she said she couldn’t sleep when the sun was out. Or how she liked to keep all the food on her plate separate. She always wanted to stay behind in taverns to listen to “just one more song.” She never liked to fight fair because she said there was no honor or fairness in fighting, only survival. She wouldn’t let him forget a promise he made, or even something he just said in passing: she always held him to his word. She snorted when she laughed. 

Suddenly he couldn’t remember what was supposed to be so annoying about those things.

  
  


\---

  
  


She had been wearing a pouch when she fell through the portal, meaning she had a few essentials including her flint: that proved to be a life-saver, because once it was dark, it was punishingly cold. Sleeping wasn’t easy without a bedroll, but she’d managed worse on rough nights; she would wake up pretty often so it wasn’t a very thorough night’s sleep. 

Perhaps most cruel of all, some sick prank by Fate herself, were the dreams: some were nice, memories and fantasies of being with Geralt, but they were ruined by waking up and remembering it had all gone to shit; some were horrible, memories and nightmares of being rejected, of being disowned by Yennefer, of being alone in the world again, but they were made worse by waking up and realizing how close they were to reality.

Every time she woke up, she felt like Geralt was right there, just across the fire like he always was. Just for a brief, torturous moment, everything was normal. 

It was still pitch black when she woke up for what must have been the twentieth time- she couldn’t be sure if it had been half the night or just an hour. A cold gust of wind woke her, having blown leaves across the sandy ground and onto her legs. She remembered the dream she had been having: her and Geralt in bed, somewhere warm and bright. His skin was almost hot against her, but in a pleasant way. He placed delicate kisses on her neck and shoulders, running his fingers through her hair. He whispered her name into her ear and told her that he needed her, which made her heart race.

It had felt so real, apparently too real, because she felt desire for him overpowering anger and hurt and whatever else was going on.

If it weren’t so cold out, and if it wasn’t the most pathetic thing she could imagine, she would’ve considered taking the edge off by pleasuring herself to the memory. 

She sat up for a moment, observing the landscape in the moonlight. There were mountains not too far off, palm trees and some rocky shores, but more than anything, what stood out was the desolation. It was quiet most of the day: no sounds of wildlife or civilization, simply crashing waves. It looked like no one had ever lived here, no traces of human intervention or even evidence of any large animals or intelligent creatures. She couldn't imagine anything lonelier.

\---

Yennefer searched the forest in case she was nearby, but he stayed behind in case she came back. Not that he really believed that would happen, because he didn’t. He sat by the fire silently the whole time, eyes closed, reaching out for her in his mind. It was like a meditation, except that it was not relaxing but very stressful. It was the spiritual equivalent of writing and sending an unending series of letters to someone who had stopped replying. Occasionally he felt himself being pulled to something, like maybe she was there _just_ out of reach. It happened rarely and it was very weak, but it was always just barely enough to keep him willing to try again, over and over. The first time it happened he foolishly wasted it: he thought the fire had died, because its glow, which looked all orange and spotty through his eyelids, had grown dark, and the warmth stopped tickling his face. He thought the fire went out, but when he opened his eyes, it was bright and hot as ever. 

When he realized that he had gotten closer to her, he chased the feeling, but it was a long time before he got another chance. Each time he got closer, thinking he was just one more stretch away, but the longer it went on the more he was sure he was fantasizing it all, high on lack of sleep and wishful thinking and love… three of the most powerful drugs.

Desperate and aching, he fell to the ground, almost overcome to tears. 

_Ciri…_ he whispered into the void. He couldn’t feel the fire, or the ground. There was no sound, no wind in the trees: just stillness.

 _Please, I need you_ , he called out to her, though externally he was silent.

And for a moment he was there. She was there. It felt like she was in his arms, even though he knew she wasn't. It felt so real. He couldn't see anything but he could feel it all.

Somewhere in a distant place, he heard footsteps approaching and he knew it was Yennefer.

"You're with her," she observed. He didn't care to question how she knew; he felt the connection slipping away, he could sense his time was limited.

He was tempted to just appreciate it but he understood that he had to use this as a chance to figure where she had gone.

"She's cold… it’s dark,” he began, rushing to describe it all before it fell apart, ”her hair is wet, the ground is wet…”

And it was gone. Shrunken down to a point which finally disappeared.

He opened his eyes and was surprised to see Yennefer, across the fire, with a tear running down her cheek.. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw her cry.

“She’s not afraid. She’s going to be okay,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster.

“Then how come you’re so scared?” She asked. 

“Stop reading my mind,” he frowned.

“Don’t have to. It’s all over your face, Geralt: you’re terrified.”

He sighed. She was right, but he wasn’t so much worried for her safety as he was scared that she was better off without him, that she wanted to be alone… that she didn’t need him anymore.

“She can fend for herself,” he reassured.

“But she shouldn’t be,” she whined, “and it’s my fault that she is.”

“No,” he corrected, “it was me: when she attacked you-”

“She didn’t mean to,” Yen jumped to her defense.

“I know,” he said.

“She didn’t want me to kill you, I suppose.”

“Yes,” he replied, “but I didn’t want her to kill you, either. And just for a moment I looked at her, and… I looked at her like a monster.”

“She’s a witcher and a sorceress: she’ll need to get used to being looked at that way,” she said with a hint of bitterness.

“But never from me. She trusted me and I failed her- more than a few times,” he admitted.

“That doesn't matter now," she explained, "you two have… a connection, something very rare."

"The magic; the bond," he noted.

"Well yes, but it's not just the magic," she chuckled, "you two always got on better than I did with her or you. I never quite understood it."

"Neither did I," he shrugged.

“But you do now?” she followed.

“Well, I did. Now she’s gone. So it’s up in the air again,” he sighed.

An awkward silence passed.

“You said it was wet where she was: didn’t you say you were heading to the coast?”

He didn’t answer, because he knew she knew she was right. He just looked up at her, mind racing with ideas about Ciri’s location.

“Could she have gone there ahead of you?” she suggested.

“It’s possible,” he said, “but that’s a lot of land to work with. She could be anywhere.”

“Then I say we start looking: search along the water,” she began as she stood up, “see if we can find anything.” She opened a portal, looking back at him expectantly.

“You’re suggesting we send ourselves through an unending series of portals, looking for Ciri using random chance?”

“It’s not random chance: we have Destiny on our side,” she answered.

He really hated this idea and he really, really hated using portals. But he was very aware of the fact that he had no other options. He stood up begrudgingly, preparing to follow her.

“I didn’t think you’d be convinced that easily,” she admitted.

“Neither did I,” he repeated, and they stepped through into the darkness.

\---

It was a long, long night, but she was awake for good the moment the sun passed over the horizon. Not that she could really see that through the rain: it was pouring so hard that it nearly hurt when the drops hit her skin. She couldn’t see far because of it, everything past maybe ten metres just gray and foggy.

It was loud as well, and yet in the distance she heard it, distinct and clear: a griffin’s cry. 

This didn’t concern her much, since griffins don’t seek out human prey necessarily, but the second one did, because it was closer.

Nervously, she stood up and drew her sword. She looked to the sky but couldn’t see much, needing to squint to keep the rain from getting in her eyes.

Another cry, from another direction. She whipped around, gripping her sword with more surety this time. Now was _not_ the time for a fight- she was wearing simple clothes and no armor, she had almost no supplies, it was horrible weather and she was alone- but she didn’t seem to have a choice.

She mentally reflected on everything she had read about griffins: _strong, lethal, stubborn, lacking in weaknesses…_

She could hear the flap of its wings and she instinctively ducked and rolled. When she popped up, she could see its tail feathers fading into the sheets of rain: it had just missed her. And it was coming back. 

She needed to remember _useful_ information about griffins, quickly.

_Susceptible to silver and hybrid oil._

She pulled a phial from her waistbelt, hastily popping the cork and dumping the contents onto her blade. Her hands were shaking from the cold and from fear, but she managed to get most of it on: it was all for naught, though, because the oppressive rain immediately washed it away.

 _“Shit!_ ” she hissed to herself, looking back to the skies frantically.

Hearing wings flapping behind her, she turned just in time to run to the side, and she got a full view of the beast. She screamed at the sight: it was an ugly, creepy-looking thing, and for just a second, its claws were extended right towards her. It swerved after it missed, flying back into the sky with a scream of its own.

_The griffin’s dive is deadly: ground a griffin before fighting it._

She didn’t have a crossbow, which is what Geralt had told her he used with griffins, but she did remember suddenly that she had a few throwing knives on her side. Her aim was good with them, but she would need to wait until she could see the damn thing a bit better.

Her hair was getting in her face, sticking to her skin from the torrential wetness, but she was too afraid to let go of her sword to fix it. 

This was so much worse alone, but she didn’t spend much time comparing the experience to fighting with Geralt at her side; mainly, she was too focused on not getting chopped into bits by a griffin’s talon, but also, more than ever, she needed to know that she could do this on her own. With the way things were going, she figured she would have to get used to it. 

She heard a screech and started to swing her sword in the direction it was coming: she missed, and only fell back in time to keep her head out of the grip of its talons. Sadly, she didn’t get away fast enough to get out totally unscathed. She didn’t just feel the claw slice into her shoulder, she _heard_ it, and it was not a pleasant experience all around. She glanced at her shoulder and saw blood and stray threads of fabric from her dress. It didn’t look so bad, but boy did it feel rough. She winced and tried to avoid thinking about the pain. Clearly her current method wasn’t working, and she needed a new plan quickly.

She had one idea, but it was not going to be fun. Hearing a screech not so far away, she sighed and dropped her sword, grabbing her throwing knives and assuming a prepared stance.

As the creature swooped towards her again, she stumbled back, but managed to throw one as she fell. It missed and the creature started to fly back upwards: she desperately tossed the second, and saw it stick in the griffin’s leg, the animal letting out a pained squawk as it flew out of sight again. 

She might have been bleeding, soaking, tired, and currently holding no weapons, but it felt like a victory. She almost smiled as she ran back to grab her abandoned sword, quickly picking up the missed throwing knife and holstering it back in her belt.

She heard it approaching again and stood at the ready.

The creature was slower now, one leg drooping lower than the other from the wound. It was flying straight towards her, but she dug her foot in and leaned forward, preparing to face it straight-on. Just as it started to extend its talons to reach for her, she leaned back and swung her sword, taking a sizeable chunk off its foot. It screamed, flapping its wings frantically as it started to fly backwards, retreating back to the rain as blood dripped down to the sandy beach.

“HA!” She yelled after it, catching her balance.

It kept crying, the sound distancing for a while but then coming back. Looking out into the sky she could see its shadowy form returning. It looked haggard, the wings flapping with a hint of belaboredness.

“You want some more?” she taunted. It cawed as if to reply, even though she knew it was just a bird who had no idea of speech or battleground insults.

She gripped her sword tighter, keeping her eyes locked on the creature.

“So do I,” she mumbled through gritted teeth as she turned her sword into a back-handed grip.

It dove, and she pushed to the side. Just as it passed beside her, she pushed her sword back with all her might, driving the blade into its side under the wing. She yelled purely from strain of using so much strength, and at the same time it let out a horrible sound, pained and broken. It crashed into the sand, skidding through the wet ground. She let go of her sword, watching it slide: it took a fair distance for it to stop, because of how fast it had been going when it hit the ground.

She considered caution when approaching it, but she found herself walking towards it without worrying much about it. There were streaks of blood in the sand, already turning into watery pools from the rain. She stepped in the puddles left in the creature’s wake, not even noticing since her boots were already ruined. Her throwing knife had fallen from its leg on the impact, and she pocketed it. 

As she drew closer she could see its breathing, slow and weak. She stood beside it for a moment, watching its face: its eyes were blinking slowly, its chest heaving.

She pulled her sword from its side and the griffin let out a strangled groan.

She observed this once-noble creature lying on a wet beach, wounded, alone, and defeated. _I’ve been there_ , she thought to herself.

One warm tear managed to escape her eye as she summoned all her strength to drive her sword through the griffin’s neck. Instantly, it was dead, the eyes gone cold and the body motionless.

She refused to allow herself to cry or to mourn something that had tried to kill her just seconds ago, but she knelt for a moment by the body, to pay respects.

She suddenly looked to the eastern end of the beach, before she even knew why she was looking or what she was looking for. There she saw two silhouettes, undeniably Geralt and Yennefer, standing in the rain. 

She stood up and pulled her sword from the beast, without looking away from them.

She couldn’t decide if she should approach them, stand still, or run away. Her indecision led to no action, and she watched sternly as Geralt began to walk towards her.

\---

It was peculiar stepping through a portal from sunshine into pouring rain. In just a few seconds he was drenched, and he looked over at Yennefer, who looked especially peeved by the conditions. He knew it was morning, because it was morning on the rest of the continent after they had searched all night, but the rain and clouds were so heavy that it was almost dark: if not dark, then unstoppably grey.

“Look,” Yen pointed, and he followed her motion to the sky: a griffin, and he could tell even from such a distance that it was fighting.

“Ciri,” he announced, starting to set forward, but Yen’s arm reached to stop him.

“There she is,” she nodded. Down on the beach, there she was indeed… soaked and puny and swinging her sword like a maniac. He saw the cut on her shoulder, the sleeve of her dress peeling away to show the gore underneath. Again he began to run to her, but Yen stopped him again.

“She’s not afraid,” she said, repeating his words from before, “she’s going to be okay.”

He looked at her angrily, and back to the battle ahead of them. His heart told him to come to her aid, but his brain knew that Yen was right, and that the last thing she wanted right now was his help. He tried to be satisfied knowing that he was close by and that he could help her if the tides turned, but he knew that having to watch this fight would be painful.

He just barely made out the glimmer of a blade lodged in the bird’s leg, and smiled a bit. Her aim was getting better.

It dove straight towards her and he turned away, unable to stomach the sight of her in danger. He heard Yen gasp and his head shot back to see what had happened, but then Yen laughed a little. He looked closer and saw she had taken half its foot off. It started to fly backwards in confusion and he almost laughed too. It was the same maneuvre she had used to take a chunk out of his leather gauntlets.

“She’s winning!” Yen said cheerfully.

He heard Ciri’s voice and focused his attention back to her. She was celebrating, perhaps prematurely, but it was adorable. She could inspire morale in a soldier who was already dead with that level of enthusiasm. As it turned to go back towards her, he heard her voice.

“You want some more?” she yelled out. He laughed at that, properly.

“Is she always like this?” Yen asked him, turning to look over at him. He didn’t look back, focusing on Ciri and her perfect defensive stance.

“Yes,” he replied, “this is what she’s like when I’m not around.”

He knew what her next move was, and he knew she would take it. Everything was starting to make sense again, at least a little bit better. Just being closer to her, even if he was technically still pretty far away, felt like such a relief. 

He watched her take her sword into a back-handed grip, preparing to deal what should be the final blow. She looked precise, stern: as she drove the blade forward, he saw that she was channeling strength but not anger, even as she cried out while she fought. 

“She looks like a Witcher,” Yen whispered with a taste of shock, just as Geralt thought the same thing.

The bird screeched and toppled to the ground. It had barely finished sliding before Ciri began marching her way towards it with determination. She pulled her sword from it and he saw that it hurt her shoulder, that she was tired from the fight. Yet, she didn’t falter, and did a quick and humane job of ending the animal’s suffering. In the moment the griffin died, he felt a tear roll down his cheek unexpectedly as he watched Ciri kneel before her quarry.

She suddenly looked up and saw him, yet he didn’t necessarily feel surprised by it. He wanted to run to her but he was deeply, purely afraid of what would happen if he did.

They maintained eye contact while she stood up and retrieved her sword.

“Go,” Yen suggested, motioning towards where Ciri was standing. Geralt nodded but didn’t look away.

He imagined how wonderful it would be if she ran to him, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. 

The closer he got, the better he could see her (since that’s how vision works); she was breathing heavy, she looked exhausted. She was still holding her sword, letting the end rest on the sand, and the rain had mostly washed away the blood.

“STOP,” she called out to him, and he did. He was only halfway to her, and he hoped she would at least hear him out. He waited silently for whatever she wanted to do, but nothing happened.

“I just want to talk!” he yelled back. She paused for a moment, and he struggled to read her expression: mainly she was blinking a lot and squinting because of the rain.

“What do you really want?” she yelled back, a little quieter, a little more serious.

He surprised himself by how instantaneously he felt his answer arise. 

“I want to go wherever you’re going,” he replied, starting to step closer to her. “I want to have you by my side: every battle, every journey, every night.”

He stepped forward again and he saw her swallow, perhaps from nervousness. Her face was almost contemptuous.

“I want us to be together because nothing is right when we’re not,” he continued. “I’m selfish, I suppose, because I want you all to myself. Everything makes sense when you’re with me and I like when things make sense, so I want to keep you around to make sense of everything.”

She smiled, just a little, before the cold shell set back in: now he knew he had a shot. They were close enough now that he could talk at a normal volume, and his voice got lower.

“I want to hold you; I can’t imagine never making love to you again,” he said. “I want to feel your skin against mine, I want to be inside you-”

Her expression shifted at that.

“I want everything, Ciri, I want you so badly that it makes everything so much more difficult, but also, so much more important. I can’t explain it-”

He stopped himself, because he realized he _could_ explain it; “I need you,” he said softly.

He was standing just in front of her now, and as he looked down at her face, he watched the rain drops hit her skin and run down.

“What do you want?” he asked her, just louder than a whisper. He waited for an answer but instead she dropped her sword, running a hand into his hair to pull him into a kiss. He gladly accepted it, leaning further down and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Her skin was so cold, everything was cold, except her mouth, which was so warm and soft as opposed to the harshness of the world.

He could feel her again, not just physically but psychically, and nothing else mattered but that moment. He felt how tired she was, how much she had been hurting because of him, and he wanted to take all her pain away and never let her hurt again. More than that, though, he felt her joy, her relief, and it felt wonderful to know that she still wanted him.

He pulled her closer, as close as he could hold her without crushing her. He felt her other hand against his chest and was enraptured in the delicateness of her touch. He smiled against her lips, and felt her teeth ever so lightly bite down on him. 

She pulled back and he instinctively tried to lean forward to prevent the kiss from ending, but stopped himself knowing she was going to say something. 

“This is all I wanted,” she whispered with a smile.

“So how about we stop chasing each other around?” he suggested with a quirked eyebrow.

“That would save a lot of time,” she smirked.

“This is it. Us.”

“And what about Yen?” she asked, a bit more nervously. He looked back to where she was standing on the far end of the beach. He couldn’t see her well from this far away but he sensed her calm: a bitterness but a serenity. She appeared to give them a nod before creating a portal and stepping through it.

“She’ll come to understand,” he said, turning back to Ciri, “or she won’t. It doesn’t matter: this is where I need to be. What anyone else thinks is… irrelevant,” he explained.

She blushed a bit and pulled him back towards her. He stopped, though, and looked at her shoulder.

"You're hurt," he observed. 

"I can handle it," she shrugged- but the motion of shrugging disturbed the cut and she winced in pain.

"I have a potion, and some wrapping," he offered.

"As long as you promise it'll leave a scar," she demanded.

He looked at her with a puzzled expression.

"I can't be a Witcher without a scar!" she explained. 

"Ciri," he soothed, "you're already a Witcher."

She smiled at him and it was so sweet and tender, that smile that made him feel warm in spite of the freezing rain.

They stayed on the beach for a long time- mostly just snogging and holding each other, with a quick break to bandage Ciri's shoulder- so long that the rain passed and the sun finally began to dry up everything. Yen had left the portal open for them, and he wondered if she would be at their camp in the forest when they got there, but it was just the horses and a dead campfire.

“That griffin fight was great and all,” he said, “but I wish you hadn’t had to take it out for free. We don’t have much coin left for a room tonight.”

“Too good for camping out?” she teased.

“Too damp for it, mainly,” he replied. "We'll splurge on a room, but we'll have to take a good contract tomorrow."

"Is it crazy if I'm actually looking forward to a job?" she asked with a smirk.

He looked back at her and couldn't hide the mischievous smile of his own.

"Yes, but it's kind of hot, too," he admitted.

They took the horses south to a larger town, and they were having such a lovely conversation on the ride that he didn't even notice the townspeople shouting "freak!" and "mutant!" at him.

The room was small, but thankfully cheap. There was a few hours left in the day but both of them just wanted to bathe and rest. Technically, they could have bathed separately but he didn't want to be away from her that long quite yet; technically, she could've undressed herself, but he had more fun helping her. 

He was delicate when he slipped the dress down over her shoulders, trying to avoid touching the bandaged area.

"Does it hurt?" he asked quietly. She shook her head.

When they were both naked, he carried her into the bath, trying to prevent her from submerging past where the bandage was. That didn't prove to be much of a concern, because as soon as she was in the water, she was straddling him and wrapping her arms around his neck.

He returned the embrace, gently running his hands along her sides and back. It wasn't long before he felt her hips pressing against him, absent-mindedly grinding and gyrating over him.

He growled, holding her tighter.

"You're insatiable," he scolded, planting a kiss on her (uninjured) shoulder.

"On the contrary: I'm entirely satiable. I bet you can satiate me," she teased, whispering just against the shell of his ear so her breath ticked the skin.

He ran his hands down to her legs, then back up to grasp her hips. Already he was very much affected by her wantonness, and he knew she could feel it.

"This is it, right?" she asked, leaning back to look at him face to face, "you and I. Together."

"Always," he replied reverently.

She looked at him a moment longer before leaning towards him and catching him in a kiss. She wasn't as ravenous right away as he expected. It was delicate and sensuous, her slender fingers running through his hair and her body pressing against him. 

_I need you_ , her voice came clearly in his mind, _right now._

Happy to oblige, he stood up and carried her out of the water, and she wrapped herself around him to cling on.

The bed was a short walk away and he gently laid her down onto it, pressing his body on top of hers.

She was writhing under him, and he could feel her desire to beg, hear her pleas for him. He was ready to give her what she wanted before she even asked, only needing to angle his hips the right way to press forward and enter her.

They were in the bath just seconds ago and she was already so wet with her own arousal. Incredible.

She moaned encouragingly as he pushed inside, the sound caught in the kiss. She was so warm, nearly hot to the touch: he thought he could burn alive from her heat.

He could feel her body struggling to accommodate him, a touch of resistance even slowing him down. But he also knew she loved the feeling, that inside her mind (and by extension, his mind) she was coaxing him ahead, telling him that she wanted to feel him stretch her open and push against her limits.

 _More_ , she demanded, _I want all of you_.

He pushed deeper until his hips were flush against hers, then thrusted a little harder just in case he could give her any more. She sobbed, aloud this time, and he still felt that instinctive fear that he would hurt her.

 _So good,_ she comforted, _you feel so good inside me._

 _You have all of me_ , he answered, not entirely sure himself if he meant it literally or emotionally.

She nodded slightly without breaking their kiss, and he pulled back partially only to push back; he moved as slowly as he could force himself to, and felt shivers run up her spine in response. Her legs were still wrapped around him, her heels pressing into the small of his back, and she tried to squeeze them in to force him to move faster. He smiled against her lips.

 _I know what you want_ , he taunted.

 _You do?_ she answered. Of course she wanted to "hear" him say it, how crude.

 _You want me to fuck you until you scream,_ he described, _slam into you with total disregard for your pain, pull your hair, make you beg for it._

 _Yes_ , she hissed in reply; not so much an answer, just an instinctive response.

_Well, you'll have to wait, because I feel like some good, old-fashioned, tender love-making._

She laughed aloud, and it was striking to truly hear her compared to hearing her in his mind.

She pulled away from the kiss, running a hand down his face and studying his expression. Despite already being naked, only now as she looked into his eyes did he feel exposed. It was a vulnerable feeling, but with complete trust in her it wasn't at all scary or uncomfortable.

"That sounds nice as well," she smiled.

"I love you," he said, despite it being sort of a non sequitur. It sort of just came out. Her smile grew and she placed a quick peck on his lips.

"I love you, too."

He began to move inside her again, slowly at first. She closed her eyes but he continued to watch her face, noticing every little detail and the way it changed when he began to pick up pace.

She bit her lip lightly, as if she didn’t realize she was doing it. He reached up to push her hair out of face, cradling her head in his hand. She leaned her cheek against his palm, and she felt like she had a fever with how hot her face was.

He continued to thrust into her and everything felt so natural- he had nearly forgotten how right it felt to be with her. Soon, he sensed a growing intensity within her, a steady but sure approach, but it didn’t take Witcher senses or a mysterious magical bond to tell she was going to come: her fists were clenched, her eyes tightly closed, her mouth hanging open slightly to accommodate her quick breaths.

He considered following her lead, letting himself give into it, but he wanted this to last as long as possible. Instead, when she started showing the undeniable signs of orgasm and he felt her muscles clench around him, he just kept pushing.

“Yes, _yes_!” she called out, pulling him closer. 

He kissed her ear and her neck, hoping to keep her in this state as long as possible

“Don’t stop, fuck, Geralt, don’t stop, please,” she begged quietly.

“I won’t,” he promised.

She sobbed, clearly balancing on the edge between pain and pleasure. He held her closer.

“I’m right here,” he soothed, “I’m right here, I’ll never leave you.”

The wave seemed to pass for her, but she was still riding on the high, her moans all breathless and dreamy. Her head leaned back, and he took the opportunity to kiss along her exposed neck and jaw.

“Please,” she whispered, “come inside me.”

“Not until you come for me again,” he demanded.

Her eyes shot open. “Again?!” 

“I know you can,” he encouraged, running his fingers lightly along her skin until he reached her leg, pulling it up to get a new angle on her. She yelped, her fingernails digging into his skin; he hoped they would leave a scar, it would be an interesting one to add to his collection. ‘Ay, what beast gave you that scar, Witcher?’ ‘The most dangerous of all, a woman.’

Fittingly, at that moment, Ciri let out a desperate sound that mixed a growl with a scream. He pushed into her more forcefully, hoping to take her through it quickly before he couldn’t hold back any longer. He could feel that she was close, her entire body tensing up under his touch.

“That’s it,” he coaxed, “let go.”

He would’ve been worried that the neighbors would hear her screams, if he were physically capable of thinking about anyone but her right now. 

Her legs quivered, and to know that he had done that to her was too much to handle. He let out an unexpectedly loud sound of his own, pushing as deep into her as he could as he felt himself falling over the edge.

He had grown to sense magic in the air, and it was surely present in the room that day. He didn’t move away from her for a long time, cradling her and silently admiring how perfectly their bodies fit together.

He had no way to tell how long it had been, but he sensed it was time to let her get some space, to prevent her from being crushed under his weight. Only then did he notice the unpleasant dampness of the sheets: a fair punishment for going straight from the bath to the bed without drying off. He was worried it would be uncomfortable for the night, but then he looked up and saw Ciri was already fast asleep. He couldn’t blame her for being exhausted after that. He indulged himself in admiring her as she slept, so peaceful. He’d almost call her innocent, if he hadn’t been there for the past hour. Regardless, she looked angelic.

\---

She woke up to Geralt gently poking her shoulder.

“I would let you sleep longer,” he said, “but you really do need a bath.”

She groaned, sitting up in the bed and rubbing her eyes.

“At this rate I’ll have to bathe twice a day, every day,” she said quietly. But then as she felt that wonderful soreness inside her, she smiled.

"Worth it," she added.

After their bath he braided her hair, and his fingers were more precise and his touch more delicate than one would expect by looking at his hands. Every time he moved a lock of hair, she felt it in her scalp and it made her feel all sensitive and shivery: if she wasn't still recovering from before, it would've turned her on enough to ask Geralt for another go.

"All done," he said proudly as he ran the braid through his palm.

"When'd you learn how to braid hair?" She asked.

"Same time I learned how to braid ropes. It's the same thing, but you don't pull as hard," he explained.

"I appreciate that; you're quite gentle."

"You seem surprised by that every time," he said defensively. She turned to face him.

"You're very good at hiding your tender side," she explained.

"Not from you," he countered.

"Not anymore you aren't, now that we have this… connection."

"Would you like to ask a mage about it?" He offered.

"I'm not trying to 'cure' it," she shrugged, "and they'd just say 'it's destiny' anyhow. Besides, it's useful. Should be handy in combat."

"Of course you're thinking of the tactical applications," he smirked.

"As always," she winked, "and now that my hair is pulled back, care for an evening spar in the courtyard?"

She never had to ask him twice.

The sun was setting and it turned everything reddish-orange. She tried to close her mind off to him, and not be distracted by how he looked in the light.

"Can't hide much from me now," he noted.

"I don't need to hide anything to win," she shrugged, pulling her sword from its sheath.

"Then how come you're always relying on the element of surprise?" he asked, gripping his own sword and taking a defensive stance 

"Can't help it: I was born by Surprise, it's part of who I am."

She charged him, but he met her halfway, anticipating it. She cursed to herself, knowing he could still read her like a book. 

They were locked in their positions, pushing their swords together and both unwilling to give in.

"Two can play at that game, you know," she said with a hint of strain, "I can read you too."

He stepped back but she pushed forward, her blade sliding along his until it hit the hilt.

"What am I thinking then?" He tested.

"You're trying to distract me, and it's not working."

He attempted to throw her off balance, but she saw it coming and stepped out of the way, instead sending him stumbling forward. He turned back just in time to block her swing, twisting her sword out of the way.

"You'll have to do better than that," he teased.

"You're thinking about how beautiful I look holding a sword," she stated coolly. His face got more serious.

"You can't stop thinking about what we did earlier, because you still feel so sore and aroused," he countered. 

"If I lay my weapon down first, you'll come over here and kiss me," she returned.

"You're going to lay your weapon down," he predicted, and she did.

He ran to her, pulling her into an embrace and kissing her passionately. She wondered for a moment how every kiss felt as powerful as the first.

"Geralt," she whispered as she pulled away, "I've been meaning to tell you something."

His forehead was pressed against hers, his hand on her waist as hers lay on the back of his neck.

"What is it, love?" He asked softly.

She pulled the throwing blade from her side pouch and pressed it against his neck.

"Surrender," she demanded. He smiled, even as he sighed in defeat.

"I surrender," he repeated, and she felt that maybe it was about more than just forfeiting a match. She threw her blade away and kissed him again, standing on her tippy-toes to reach his height. He picked her up, and she instinctively wrapped herself around him. 

As much as her competitive spirit was overjoyed at the outcome of the practice, this was the moment where she really felt like she won.

  
  
  
  
  
  


\--- Epilogue: a few years later ---

The landscape was beautiful, and sprawling: hills, trees, mountains in the distance, and just ahead, a lake sparkling in the sunlight. Sometimes people described perfect weather as a “cloudless sky” but she preferred how it looked now: bright blue, dotted with fluffy white clouds that looked soft and dry and comfy like a fine down quilt. She heard him walking up to the shore with her, but she didn’t look back.

“Thinking of running off?” His voice came from behind her. She turned around and saw him leaning on a tree, looking her up and down.

“Not a chance,” she smiled, approaching him.

“You’d make a lovely noonwraith,” he joked. She laughed, pushing against his shoulder playfully.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she scolded, “I’ve heard it’s bad luck for the groom to see his bride before the ceremony.”

“That’s something businessmen made up to get away with selling ugly daughters to dukes for trade reasons. If that’s what’s happening here, then I got cheated out of my dowry.”

She normally didn’t laugh this hard at his jokes, but she was a bit nervous and jittery.

“Go back now, you’re going to run the whole thing late,” she demanded, pushing on his shoulder again to signal him to return.

“Fine,” he conceded, stepping back. He hadn’t made it very far when he stopped and started back. She rolled her eyes.

“I almost forgot: you look stunning,” he said with a wide grin..

“I know! Now go!”

“I love you,” he added, giving her a peck on the lips.

“Geralt, you’re stalling.” She crossed her arms.

“I’m going, I’m going!” 

He dashed back towards the clearing as she laughed and gave him a wave goodbye, as if she wouldn’t see him in a few minutes anyhow.

It was a simple wedding, just something intimate that Geralt had suggested they do to solidify their relationship. She had assured him it was already solid, but he wanted to have all their friends gather for it and celebrate with them, so she went along. She had worn nicer dresses, much more royal ones certainly, but she didn’t want to do this as a princess; in fact, she had wanted to do it as a Witcher, but Yen had made her promise not to wear trousers or any armor whatsoever. They compromised on something summer-y and delicate, but primarily comfortable, and Yen lent her some nicer jewelry that elevated it a bit. Her friend Bea- yes, she had made a friend, don’t act so surprised- had helped her braid her hair and even weaved wildflowers into it. 

Dandelion had been kind enough to entertain everyone, and him and his band kept the dancing going well into the night. She had no idea how well Geralt could do a jig, even with so much ale in his system. She was sure she had never laughed so hard, or had so much fun. 

“Alright, alright, everyone have a seat for a moment,” Dandelion announced as another dance ended. She wasn’t sure what he wanted, but she happily obeyed, as did the other guests. He motioned for them to keep down the chatter, and cleared his throat to speak loudly so everyone could hear.

“I brought a gift for the couple,” he began, “but I didn’t go the _easy_ way like all of you did with something silly and material. In fact, I have-”

“Written a song,” half the crowd interrupted, finishing the sentence for him with partially-drunken annoyance. 

“I was going to say ‘composed a ballad,’” he frowned, “but alright. Yes, I prepared something that will hopefully inspire hundreds and spread the word of such a glorious, beautiful, and slightly murderous couple.”

She laughed and looked over at Geralt, whose facial expression could only be described as flattered nervousness.

“Don’t worry, I kept it mostly family-friendly,” Dandelion winked, taking his lute into position. He played a few chords, something happy yet thoughtful, and began to sing...

_Allow me to tell all a most wonderful tale_

_O’ how Destiny be a strange bedfellow_

_Yet her prophecies peculiar always prevail_

_Sure as the sun shines yellow_

_Be warned, for the mighty Geralt of Rivia_

_Was bested by the Law of Surprise_

_He could not resist fate when he was promised Cirilla_

_Knew he was a goner when he saw those green eyes_

_A princess and a Witcher were destined to meet_

_And soon they fought evil side by side_

_It didn’t take long for her to grow to a woman_

_Didn’t take much longer for him to make her a bride_

_Yea, he who faced and defeated every beast_

_Was finally conquered by the greatest of all_

_For Love found him sitting at a wedding feast_

_In the southern countryside, as the leaves changed for Fall_

_If you believe in Love, you know my tale is true_

_And if you be a monster, best take heed_

_For if two white-haired Witchers are hunting you_

_They will slay you most fiercely, as Destiny hath decreed_

He took a bow as the song ended, and everyone clapped merrily. Ciri laughed, her eyes even a little watery from the lyrics.

“That was lovely, Dandelion, thank you s-”

She stopped suddenly. She felt a bit dizzy, almost seasick. The meal, which had been delicious before, smelled wretched. She put a hand to her mouth, dashing to the forest, but didn’t make it far before emptying the contents of her stomach onto the ground. The guests made a collective “ _oooh_ ” sound of disgust and concern.

Instantly, she knew. And as she stood back up, wiping her mouth and looking at the crowd, she met Geralt’s gaze and was sure he knew as well.

“Had a bit too much to drink, eh? ‘Snormal, at weddings,” Dandelion said nervously, kindly trying to play it off so she wouldn’t be embarrassed.

“Not a drop,” she mumbled in reply.

A very still, but important, moment passed. Some would call it a ‘pregnant pause,’ but that would be a bit too on the nose.

As if by a humorous coincidence (though Ciri did not believe in coincidence) at the exact same time she, Geralt, Dandelion, and Yennefer all said the same thing:

“Fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been a journey and I'm so glad you're all here with me. Thank you for reading, for all your comments and kudos, and for your support!


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